Garden update - early July 2013

We've been so busy gardening and homesteading that we haven't had the time to actually blog about it.  Here's a rundown of what's happening so far.

*  We picked, cleaned and frozen (or dried) 17 lbs of strawberries.  We have strawberries growing in our own yard, but not enough to really do much with other than eat fresh.  So, we went to the place we've gone to for the last couple of years and ate to our hearts' content, then processed like crazy.  We are really looking forward to picking blueberries too.

*  We bought 22 lbs of cherries and froze half while using the other half to make the cherry butter that is currently scenting the kitchen from the crock pot.  We'll be using a mix of the two recipes here and here.  Can you imagine what that cherry butter will taste like on white chocolate cherry English muffin toasting bread?  No?  Well, we'll make up a recipe and let you know.

* We went to a flea market and bought a small van load of fruits and vegetables.  After a day and a half of sitting in a hot van, the strawberries were useless but for compost.  We did, however, have much more to process. We dried 3 lbs of bananas, froze a case each of peaches, mangoes, blackberries, blueberries, and sweet corn (this method really works for shucking quickly, except we didn't even bother nuking).  We ate fried plantains with our fish tacos topped with avocados and mango salsa that night.  It was, as our 2-year-old says "de-yi-cious."

* We are done with kale.  I picked the last of it and blanched it to be frozen.  Same for cilantro, which we'd never preserved before but I had to figure out how we could do that because it bugged me so much last year that our cilantro had gone to seed (coriander) by the time the tomatoes were ready.  For cilantro, basically you just freeze it and vacuum seal it. 

* Lettuce is about done.  It's getting a bit bitter.  There have been many lovely salads with lettuce, beet thinnings, turnip thinnings, cabbage thinnings, lambs quarters, and asparagus. 

* Yarrow tincture is in the jar and ready to keep away pesky bugs, both viral or bacterial and the nasty flying around skeeters with our homemade bug spray.

* The potatoes are growing like crazy (at least the tops are, so I hope the tubers are too).  We didn't grow sweet potatoes this year because last year we only got tops and not the tubers.  Maybe we could do some sweet potatoes for house plants later.

* Our parsnips, again, did not come up. Several of our ordered plants also didn't take too well to either the severe rainy weather or the some other reason.  I will be writing the company to get replacements because the fortunately have a one-year replacement.  Of course that means that you go online to the website and end up wanting more stuff.  Unfortunately, we lost some things that were not covered by a guarantee because they were more than a year old.  We lost a cherry tree to a large ant nest, and a paw paw tree to heavy water runoff from the downspout.  We did have a large ant nest by our honey berry plant but boiling water and cornmeal shut that down and there is small growth on it again.

* And besides the garden, we are still raising the chickens.  No eggs yet, but they are really loving the scraps from strawberry tops and mushy cherries.

Our yard in pictures - May 17, 2013

This is one of the several stepping stones the girls made

Yes, this is inside, but it's the "forest" the girls made to encourage Spring

Newly planted trees, shrubs, etc - all will hopefully produce yummy goodies for us

The chicks hiding from the drizzles

Another view of all the things we just put in - some neighbors love it, some hate it

The fairy garden, which also has potted trees: fig, banana, and pomegranate

The girls get to ride their upcycled tire horse near the fairies

The plum tree is in bloom, and has a 3-in-1 citrus and a stevia plant on its mulch

The new strawberry bed.  The other was way too crowded.  Flowering all ready!

The 6 raised beds (still needing planting for the most part), and the 8x8 acidic blueberry bed

The rabbits ate down the peach tree a couple years ago and now there are three branches.  I will attempt tree shaping around the ornament.

The rabbits ate down one of my honey berry plants.  Thankfully, I see some life.

The apple tree has leaves, but no blossoms yet.

The little cherry tree in the front yard that was a volunteer in a friend's garden and was gifted to us

Yep, indoors again.  The branch to hang the pics was a trimming from one of our fruit trees

Garden prep list

May 7th, 2013

So this list is mostly for me, but you can see what effort goes into it.  This year, with last week's 16 inch snowfall (yes, on May 2nd), a lot of things didn't get done as timely as I would have liked.

Here's what we've got to get done:
***UPDATED May 13, 2013***
*string wire for the hops to grow up the garage

Get more compost (the site is only open Saturday mornings and Tuesday afternoons - guess what I'm doing first thing Saturday.)

Fill raised beds 1, 3, 4, 5 & 6 with compost.  I filled bed 2 today with our own compost and then covered it with dirt.

Replant the strawberries into bed 2.  Toss (not compost) the diseased ones.  Pinch the runners so the strawberries put their energy into berry production instead of propagation.  Give away the rest of the bed's worth of strawberries. 

Weed area around back and side of garage.  Edge with bricks.

Weed, put down newspapers and/or cardboard, put down weed barrier, and mulch planted area on the back and side of house.

Weed, put down newspapers and/or cardboard, put down weed barrier, and mulch the area for the kiwi.

Weed, put down newspapers and/or cardboard, put down weed barrier, and mulch the 8x8 lasagna garden, after planting the blueberries.

Build/Install trellis for the grapes.  

Plant trees/bushes/etc
 - Paw paw (one that needs to be moved and replanted because I don't want it to shade the yard.  The other will stay where it is)
 - Flowering cherries (two in front, two in back)
 - Sea berries (two in back)
 - Sweet cherries (in back)
 - Elderberry (two in back)
 - Aronia (back)
 - Juneberry (back)
 - Hazelnut (two in back)
 - Goji (back)

Make an area of the yard acidic (yes, I know that I should have started this last year, but the area where my blueberries are does not get as much sun as I'd like, so I'll have to watch it closely as I have the plants that I need to plant now).  The acidic bed is now in the 8x8 lasagna bed.

Move the blueberries.

Weed, put down newspapers and/or cardboard, put down weed barrier, and mulch around each of the above, and also around the Russian mulberries, red and white currants (in back), and honey berries (on the side). 

Plant in pots
 - 3-in-1 citrus tree
 - Pomegranate tree 
 - Stevia
 - Banana tree

Make a teepee trellis for the girls to enjoy the plants that will grow on it and make the "walls" of a "fort"

Put in compost on the backside of the house to direct water away from our foundation (water problem in the basement with the ice dams on the roof earlier this winter)

Dig up a gooseberry plant or few from my friend's house and re-plant at ours.

Set up a trellis between a couple of the raised beds for plants to grow vertically (melon, cucumbers, gourds, etc can be grown up so as not to have the fruits on the ground or sprawling everywhere, but make note of companion planting, as you wouldn't want your melons, cukes, squashes, gourds near each other, or you'll end up with something like the cucumber-tasting melon we had last year).

If we have time (well, when we make the time), we need to:
*add on to the chicken coop so that the girls have nesting boxes.  I would also like to have a door on the bottom so that it's easier to get to their food and water.
*power wash and stain/seal the girls' playset
*build a hammock stand because we don't have two large trees close enough together and I want to use my hammock

Oh yes, and there's planting to do.  Here's our list:

Seeds/roots:
Lettuce (need to be replanted because of the snow storm, as nothing is coming up after a few weeks)
Beans
Peas (planted and coming up)
Beets (need to be replanted because of the snow storm, as nothing is coming up after a few weeks)
Carrots (need to be replanted because of the snow storm, as nothing is coming up after a few weeks)
Cabbage
Parsnips (planted, but nothing coming up yet)
Cucumbers
Kale (need to be replanted because of the snow storm, as nothing is coming up after a few weeks)
Pumpkin
Gourds
sweet potatoes
blue potatoes
broccoli
cauliflower
zucchini
nasturtiums
Sunflowers
spaghetti squash
turnips
salsify
cilantro
amaranth
calendula
parsley
epazote
echinacea
sage
st john's wort
goldenseal
ginsing
ginger
perennial leeks

Plants:
Melon
Watermelon
Tomato (a lot!)
Eggplant
Tobacco
Ground cherries
Peppers
basil
comfrey (I have someone who would give me a cutting, but my husband is still wary about it since it can easily take over.  We're still thinking about actually planting it).

We've got plenty more that has been planted, or overwintered, or are perennials, but I'm excited to get things going. 

So far, we have some asparagus coming up, along with rhubarb, onions & garlic.  It will be so nice to eat right out of the garden again!

It's harvest time already!

It's not even July yet and we have a bounty.  It's too hot today to get a lot canned, but we are blanching and freezing.  We've got the broccoli raab (I also have seen that it is spelled broccoli rabe, but it's still pronounced rahb whichever way you spell it), beets (we had to thin them out), and turnips (thinned those out too).   The pea pods were frozen, but I don't know that we'll do too many more frozen pods, so we'll try out this pea pod soup recipe with the next harvest.
We are using up the lettuce tonight.  I'm having to pull the rest because of the heat.  It's getting leggy and bitter, so most of it was pulled already.  Though not preservable, we'll be using it in the compost.  I question whether I should continue to plant lettuce considering we don't eat much of it, but I've got the seeds and it's nice to have something ready early in the season. 
I've harvested the garlic, and it needs to be brushed off and cured for a few weeks.  Some of the bulbs are a bit tiny, but it will be fun braiding them when they are cured.  We go through a lot of garlic in a year, so this won't be enough for next year, but it was a good experiment.  I'd like to get some more at the farmer's market and make garlic oil, as well as pickle some.  Those will come in handy when there is the inevitable winter cold coming on. After pulling the garlic and lettuce, we also have half of a bed to plant some more things in July and August.
The volunteer plants have been popping up all over.  We have several volunteer tomato plants, ground cherries, pumpkins, a melon plant, and of course, the cilantro.
The herbs are growing like crazy.  We'll be making all sorts of pesto, including broccoli raab, nasturtium leaf (we'll likely eat the flowers raw), mint, thyme, basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro, greens (from the turnips and beets), and combinations of them.  Pesto will go great on pasta, but also as a spread on sandwiches. 

We subscribe to Mother Earth News, and this month's issue suggests Ball's website for canning recipes. There's over 200 recipes, so we'll have fun testing out some new ones this year.  There were also some books listed for sale in the issue, and though we don't have the moola to buy all the ones I'm interested in, we're fortunate to have a library that offers inter-library loans.  The library system will even bring it to my local library and send me an e-mail when they have arrived.  I'm excited to try pear butter (we'll have to buy the pears at the farmer's market because our tree is not going to produce for a few more years) and yellow tomato jam.  Those recipes can be found in The Big Book of Preserving The Harvest.

Garden report - the end of May

My garden is mostly in 6 raised beds, though there are quite a bit of other gardening areas throughout the yard.  Rather than blogging, I've been spending most of my day light hours out there, getting things planted.  I am almost done.  Here's what we've got so far:

Bed 1:  Beans, beets & more beets, celeriac, nasturtiums.  The beans and most of the beets are starting to look great.  They aren't even halfway grown yet, but it's still early on and a lot of people are just starting to plant.  I don't think the celeriac is going to make it but it's worth a try.  A friend gave us the nasturtium plant so hopefully it will do well.  Nasturtiums and their leaves taste so good in pesto.

Bed 2:  Garlic, radishes, eggplant, 2 types of lettuce, cilantro that reseeded itself, broccoli raab, and spinach.  The garlic was overwintered from last fall, planted in October.  It should be ready this summer.  I planted radishes between the garlic rows just to have something that would grow fast and give us variety for our also-early-season lettuces.  The eggplant probably won't have a lot of productivity until the garlic is ready to go, so I planted the eggplant so that it can take over the garlic's area after that harvest.  The strawberry spinach, bought as a novelty to give it a taste, isn't coming up at all.  I planted just regular spinach there instead so that it's not wasted space.  The broccoli raab is very pretty so far, but was also bought as a novelty so I don't know how it will taste yet.

Bed 3:  Georgia Jet sweet potatoes, soybeans, purple beans, and cauliflower.  The sweet potatoes were mail ordered.  The instructions did say that they would be okay even if wilted, but they don't look all that well.  I'll give them a chance and see how they do.  I would love to have our own home grown sweet potatoes.  As for the soybeans, I love edamame.  It's a great snack.  Just sprinkle some salt on it and scrape out the beans from the pod with your teeth.  The purple beans are fun.  I finally found my stash of seeds from last year so I planted these again because you can easily find them when harvesting.  The beans do turn green when steamed or cooked though.  The cauliflower is a second attempt.  Last year I grew some (if you could call it growing).  It did not do well at all.  It was way too crowded and had very tiny heads, with black spots on them.  I had to pull them all.  This time, I have different seeds, more space, and hopefully better luck.  Since this was all just planted today, but for the sweet potatoes, the bed just looks like a bin of dirt for the moment.

Bed 4:  Peas, parsnips, carrots, turnips, thyme, parsley, and mint.  The peas are doing very well.  I can see little pea pods forming.  I love eating fresh pea pods right off the vine.  That is one of my favorite tastes.  I am trying parsnips again.  They didn't grow for me last year but I like them so much that I had to try again.  The turnips grew in some areas where seeded but not in others, so I replanted some seeds today in hopes that we'll have a good turnip harvest.  I planted three types of carrots because I want to see if last year's tiny crop was because of some fluke.  I also planted lasts year's seeds in compost, which is a no-no.  I knew it then too, but I wanted carrots and had only compost.  I knew that it would make them fork, but even with what little we had last year, they were tasty.  The thyme came back unexpectedly from last year.  I'll likely replant it near some other herbs in the ground by the back of the house, but I'll leave it for now.  I added the parsley there just because that's where I was when I grabbed it.  As for the mint, well, that was not intentionally planted but was there last year and I can't get it to go away, so I end up pulling it out occasionally, but always unsuccessfully.

Bed 5:  Strawberries.  The entire bed is strawberries, and one hanging basket of strawberries too.  I have been picking off the black spotted leaves and the plants are looking healthy.  We've even got some strawberries almost ready to be picked.

Bed 6:  Lots of tomatoes, two types of basil, and ground cherries.  We diversified our tomatoes so that we have plenty of sauce tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, and pop-in-your-mouth tomatoes.  Basil grows well with them (and is great in pasta dishes and salsa) so the basil always gets planted with the tomatoes.  The ground cherries are doing very well.  This bed is filled with plants from a friend who grew them from seed months before.

In-ground bed & around it:  Onions, zucchini, and potatoes.  We planted 100 onion sets of red, and 100 sets of yellow onions.  That equals a lot of blooming onions in our home.  I only have three zucchini plants growing and that's intentional.  We still have zucchini left in the freezer that we were not able to finish off before this season started.  We have three types of potatoes in bins - blue (saved from last year's), red, and golden.  All of them will taste delicious.  The plants have grown so well that twice already I've had to cover over them. 

We're trying a lot of perennials too.  We planted a second hops, and also put espizote and tobacco nearby, along with more asparagus.  For fruits, we planted honey berries, goji berries, mulberries, currants, Arctic kiwi, 2 paw paw trees, 2 hazelnut trees, a lemon tree and lime tree (to be brought indoors in the winter), and we still need to plant the fig tree.  I think I may have lost two of the four blueberry plants and my Saskatoon blueberry, but I hope they'll come back.    I'm hoping the previous years' plants and trees grow bigger, including the grapes, raspberries, blackberries, apple tree, plum tree, pear tree, peach tree, and cherry trees.  Once these all start producing, we'll have a cornucopia of goods every year.

We did outline a spot for our medicinal garden, but haven't planted anything there yet.  It's an 8x8 area zoned off with wood and we're doing the lasagna gardening style there.  We were unable to get enough compost to start planting there yet.  We hauled two loads on Saturday but then it started raining and they close off the site when it rains, so we'll have to wait for another day.  

Almost forgot - my MIL painted some gourds last year.  Our 3-year-old (yep, she just had a birthday) thought that it would be nice to grow her some more gourds to paint.  We planted those in the hole where Jaimie dug the pit for the Great Plains Style Barbequed lamb.   The birdhouse gourd that she got last year is still hanging outside in the back yard, and the birds yell at me every time I venture near it.

That's our garden report for the end of May.  I'm hoping for more successes to report!

A friend's garden walk in Illinois

I love this wonderful garden report.  This is from my friend's blog.  You can certainly tell that one state down they are growing things much earlier than we are!

Garden Walk, April 2012

Out I went, into the blustery day. Quite a difference from last time!

Starting at the house, the toad bed is getting a bit overgrown with weeds, but most of them are edible, so when I get a chance and the weather straightens out, I will be weeding it and eating it. Along the ramp, the flowers I had planted last year do not look to have reseeded, but it is still early, the Salvia may come back yet. Grandma Arlene’s Rose is about four foot high already, and had buds at one point. They froze, although the plant itself seems to be doing fine. The Hollyhocks and poppies I planted in the former Geranium bed are slowly struggling to overcome the transplant shock, while the new rose bush, Tammy’s Rose, is bravely growing taller after being planted this spring.

The lilies under the window are totally grown, while the Spirea is all leafed over. The Spirea, however, has many little black and drooping clusters, from the cold and wind. Luckily, no flowers yet, hopefully the weather will hold off.

The West flower bed along the house has not been planted, so nothing there yet, but around the corner on the north side the Wild Geraniums, Solomons Seal and the Spiderwort are all growing nicely.

Over by the gas tank, all the daffodils are done blooming and are going to seed, but the Iris and Peonies are coming on strong.  Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandma peony is getting ready to bloom. It’s an old, single one, given to my Ojibwa five times great grandmother by her new mother in law. Or at least, that is what my great grandma told me when she gave it to me!

The snowball bush over by the garage is already covered with light green snowballs, soon to start turning white. Around the corner, on the back side, the Mother Wort, Mug Wort and False Dragons Head are all coming along nicely. The Prairie Patch, however, has decided to go CRAZY with growth, I have more plants than before in there, seems like every single seed that dropped may have seeded. Anyone want some prairie plants? I have an overabundance!

The ‘Jungle is growing rampantly, as expected. We will be moving the path to the Fairy Shrine this summer, and then making another path through the jungle, so lots planned for this area. In the meantime, the Bleeding Hearts are blooming away, the dogwoods are filling with leaves, the oft cut never killed blackberry vine is twining it’s way through everything, the Butterfly bush is starting leaves, the Rose of Sharon is starting leaves (yes, I know it is not yet May, tell that to the darn bush) and the ferns are a good six inches already. The Swamp milkweed has not yet made an appearance, but considering the weather, probably a good thing. The Siberian Iris are up, although no buds. All the Grape Hyacinths are done blooming, and have just about disappeared into the back ground.

At the herb beds, the Marsh Mallow is about an inch tall now, still just waiting for the warmer weather, I think. The Echinacea, Joe Pye and Wild Astor fill out that row, and they are all coming along about as well as they should for this time of year.

The next row has also gone a bit crazy. The Lemon Balm has totally overtaken the Spearmint, which I never thought possible. The only thing it has not taken over is the Lemon Thyme. The two are filling that bed. Next is the Lavender, which has gotten huge- I had an entire bouquet of blooms last year, am looking forward to more this year. The next two beds are a compendium of plants, including Surprise Lilies, Blanket Flowers, Asters, Yarrow and Creeping Thyme. Next are the Anise Hyssop and Catnip, and finally the Oregano and Fleabane.

The following bed is the rhubarb, which I did have to cut down this week because of frost (rhubarb will get poisonous if frosted, best to cut it down, let it grow back up), and then the chives, along with the unbelievable ‘lasted through the winter’ parsley. Next is the horseradish, already flowering, and last is the sage.

The Phoebe has already built her nest in the former sandbox/now wood shed, and when I checked this morning already has eggs. The strawberry bed is blooming, sadly, since we are supposed to get frost again this week. Looks like I will probably be plucking blossoms off at some point. The garlic is growing nicely, and both the old garden and new are ready and waiting for seeds/plants.

The grape trellis is steel, which is good, because once again the grapes are coming on strong. The raspberries, not so much. Still haven’t decided what we are going to do with this, we both love raspberries, but have not gotten more than a handful since moving it to this spot. Am wondering if perhaps it is time to cut these down and actually go and (shudder) buy some raspberry plants, rather than getting them from people I know…will have to think long and hard on this one!

The little raspberry patch is growing, still too small to have berries, and the Jeremy Rose is growing well.

The Apple trees, well, what can I say? IF the bees found the blossoms, and IF the cold does not kill the little apples, and IF they stay healthy, we just may have more apples than ever before. Pay attention, you who come to the annual Apple Cider Making Weekend over Labor Day weekend.

The new Peach, Cherry and Apple trees all made it through the winter in great shape. The Peach trees were covered in blossoms, but I pulled off all but one on each one. They are just in their second year; do not want to stress them just yet. Did have to leave one on each, though, just to see….

The Mums we transplanted, in full flower, to the west side of the shed last year from Jeremy’s all made it through the winter and are coming up. The Clematis on the East end, where we put the lattice panels, are about two –three foot high and have flower buds, the comfrey on the east end is up about 8 inches, and, believe it or not, the deer decimated Hostas from last year have all come back, they are about four inches high. I am delighted, and amazed, lol.

The Pear trees are half and half- one was full of blossoms, looks great, the other had maybe two limbs of blossoms, the rest of the tree has been killed by the Black Walnut next to it in the draw. Will probably cut it down this year. The new lilac line (must think of a new name for these, they are now about three years old) are growing well, as is my one burning bush at the end. The Old Lilac line, which was in full flower before all the storms, has about half their flowers now. The wind was so strong this past weekend it blew a lot of the flowers off.

The dogwood/rose of Sharon/American Cranberry/lily line on the south side of the property are almost all coming up, although once the lilies bloom and I get them marked they will be moved to- they are maroon and gold lilies, Stockton’s colors, so once marked will put one of each at the four corners of the shed, house etc.

The birds are always here, the Phoebe is back, as I said, as are the Robins and Tree Swallows. No barn swallows yet, no hummingbirds yet, no Baltimore Orioles yet. I am concerned about the Barn Swallows; this will be the first year with the shed and no barn, so am very worried we won’t get them back. Oh, and no sigh of my little brown bats, but then again, no bat house just yet, either. (Anyone know where I can find one, cheap??).

The cats, well, Mama, Tigger, Sonny, Junior, Scrappy, Ringo, Duke and Princess are fine. Casper, Missy, Zebby and Duchess, not so much. Mama is pretty much chasing away all my girls, except for Princess who is 14 and ignores her. Missy, in fact, came over to eat yesterday and she is skinny- this means somewhere across the road in the timber is a litter of kittens. I hope. There is not a chance in heck I could find them out there, so all I can do is offer up a prayer and keep trying to find a home for Mama. Tweety is gone, crossing the road at the wrong time. I buried her and her three unborn kittens over in the jungle, by the ferns she loved so well.

Otherwise, we are all doing well here. I bought boards to try and keep the meditation deck up dated, new garden fencing for around the house bed, am redoing the mediation deck to represent more of a garden room so have bricks, totes and other lovelies on the deck itself, waiting to be turned into something wonderful. The pond has not yet been uncovered and set up, that is waiting for warmer weather too.

There is a lot of weeding waiting to be done, but with the warm weather in March a lot of trimming and weeding was done early, so that will help when it finally decides to warm up and Sister wind decides to stop singing quite so forcibly!

I hope you all have good things growing in your life, with the things you have no control over, (like kittens in the timber) able to be handed to those in control so you can continue with what you can handle. Many Blessings on all!

Garden planning

Is it too overwhelming to figure out what to plant, when to plant it, where to plant it, and how to keep it going?  Try out this website.

Good luck with your garden planning!

Garden report - the start of Spring

 We’re past the spring equinox by a week now and our garden is already growing nicely.  I recall that last year at this time we still had snow on the ground.  With the mild winter and the warm temps, we’ve got a lot to report about. 

Our yard doesn’t have a ton in the way of flowers, because I tend to use my sunny spots for edibles.  The only flowers we planted were tulips, astilbe, something my MIL gave us (I can’t remember the name) and bleeding hearts, because those are things we can put in the shady front yard.  The astilbe and tulips have poked through and have green foliage, but no blooms yet.  There were flowers in our yard before we moved in and some of those have started growing already too – peonies (a bunch, even under the black walnut tree), irises (still, after the bags-full we gave away last year), and roses (which I have tried to kill two years in a row, but keeps coming back - it’s too prickly).  The lilac tree is budding up nicely, as are the fruit trees (apple, two cherries, plum, peach, and pear), and the black walnut.  

This was taken March 19th - already budding before Spring

This is our garlic as of March 19^th (still technically winter, but with spring/almost summer weather). 

This is our garlic as of last night, March 27^th.  It’s getting very tall.  I am so excited that our garlic grew because last year’s crop died.  This will be our first successful crop!

We also have asparagus and rhubarb coming up. 

Asparagus in the foreground and rhubarb in the background

And we’ve got our hops growing, which should produce flowers this year so that we can make beer with them. 

As for fruits, the raspberries and grapevine seem to be alive.  I’m not so sure about the blueberries or juneberry, but I’ll give them some time.  I’ll likely be replacing the strawberries because the plants that we have haven’t really produced in the last two summers, but maybe I’ll just plant them in another area.  I do have some strawberry plants on order coming soon. 

Having variety allows you to still have produce even if one crop doesn’t do well.  There’s generally an abundance of some other crop to make up for it. 

I have already started planting some seeds.  There are several types of plants that do well in cooler weather and should be planted “as soon as the ground can be worked.”  In our zone, that’s generally late April or so.  This year, it was mid March, which made everyone wonder if you should really be planting that early.  But, one friend had success with her peas and other early crops, the nursery said to “go for it” except for the plants you’d generally start indoors (like tomatoes and peppers), and one farmer who provides us with our chickens thought that it was a great time to do the early stuff.  So, we planted peas, two types of lettuce, spinach, and broccoli raab.  If they don’t produce, then I’ve got more seeds to plant when it’s later in the season.  The weather forecast doesn’t show any freezing temps for the foreseeable future so I’m hoping we’ll be ok. 

Seed porn

A few months ago, I got my seed catalogs in the mail.  Jaimie calls them my seed porn.  I refer to his cooking magazines as his food porn.  It really is porn, because we will look at it for hours on end.  We'll admit that we look at the pictures too, not just the articles.
Last year I went to a seed exchange/seed ordering gather at a friend's house.  Looking at seed catalogs and planning a garden allows you to look forward to when you can get back outside and not be cooped up for so long.  Of course we've been outside, but not for extended periods of time because the cold will get to you.  There's no dirt to dig into because the ground it frozen.  Everything is resting and I know it's said that we should be too, but I need the anticipation of having the warm sun, and green growth, and getting my hands full of dirt.  As with most people around late winter, I think I'm going slightly crazy being inside all the time.  I know that I'm being productive and eating well, but I'd rather be eating it straight from the garden because I just can't make it into the house without popping some delicious veggie in my mouth.  For now, I am still eating well, but I would even give up the three types of ice cream I just made (banana cream, peanut butter with chocolate bits, and Guinness) for a juicy home grown tomato.

My mouth is watering already.

So this weekend I went to the same aforementioned friend's home and looked through catalogs together, discussing things we want to grow this year.  It really does put me in a completely different mindset to have the anticipation of spring, even though it's two weeks away and planting time is even further away.  While perusing through the luscious looking fruits, I came across some unexpected finds.  Many catalogs are carrying fruit trees generally suited for warmer climates but are rated as far north as zone 4 (where we live).  While this is exciting to me, I also want to make certain that we're not ordering Monsanto products.  We ordered from three catalogs altogether, and I am excited to have my garden plan.  (Well, the plan for what I want to plant, but not yet where I want to plant it all).

Seed porn and some food porn in the upper left (and a cat tail)

My friend has a great set-up to start from seed the things you need to start indoors.  I am not so great with that, as my tomatoes are teeny, tiny little sprouts rather than plants at the end of 8 weeks.  So, I will leave the indoor planting to the professional.  She will provide me with these plants:

Ground cherries (delicious in pies, salsas, or just eaten fresh)
Tomatoes (beefsteak, pear, and sauce types)
Eggplant (mmm... baba ghanoush)
Basil
Thyme and other herbs
Hot peppers
Cantaloupe (yes, even this far north - it's called MN Midget)
Cucumbers
Watermelon

We will also be planting these:
Carrots
Parsnips (they didn't produce last year but I need to try again because the farmer's market doesn't carry them).
Turnips
Beets
Soybeans
Watermelon
onions
pumpkin
squash (zucchini and spaghetti, maybe some other winter squash too).
beans
peas
potatoes (red, blue, and whatever else I find for seed potatoes)
kale
lettuce
cilantro
nasturtiums


For the medicinal garden, we will start with:
Catnip
German chamomile
St John's Wort
Caledula
Sweet woodruff
 (Eventually, I'd like to add skullcap, comfrey, mullein, wormwood, and white sage.  We already have plantain, yarrow, and chickweed throughout the yard).

We ordered some white and red currant plants, honey berry plants (like blueberries, but earlier and without the acidic soil), a fig tree (yes, for zone 4) and two paw paw trees.  I've never had paw paws but Jaimie likes them.  Our friend ordered a persimmon tree and I said that we should just trade some fruit when they start producing in a few years.  I'm also going to replace the strawberry plants.  Mine don't seem to want to make very productive strawberries.

Hopefully everything we've planted so far will come back and grow well.  This year we'll be able to harvest more of the asparagus that was planted two summers ago.  For herbs, we have mint, oregano, and lemon balm.  We also have rhubarb, raspberries, saskatoon berry (also like a blueberry but without acidic soil), grapes (well, a small vine anyway), hops, and the trees:  plum, peach, pear, apple, and two cherry trees.

Now I've just got to plan out the layout!

Fall planting

Last fall I planted some garlic in early October and then we had two weeks of 80 degree weather.  None of it came  up.  This year, I waited until yesterday and planted three rows.  It's late October, late by most standards for planting fall garlic, but I didn't want to lose them again.  We like to practice crop rotation (less of a production than you'd think for a backyard garden).  Crop rotation is good for preventing disease and also takes into consideration the nutrients left behind in the soil from what was previously planted there.  We tend to move soil around too, because we're still expanding our garden with more raised beds the previous spring (having hauled two trailers full of compost while 9 months pregnant in May).  After a bit of research, I found that most crop rotation plans suggest planting garlic after tomatoes.  (Tomatoes shouldn't be in the same spot year after year.  They should have two years in-between so that they are in the same spot only every three years.  Also, other nightshades like potatoes or peppers shouldn't follow tomatoes either). 
This year I planted some garlic we'd bought from the farmer's market and some we'd bought from the grocery store.  I figured two types might make a difference.  Last year I bought some from a catalog but they rotted before I got them in the ground, and then the garlic I bought from the local garden shop didn't come up at all.
I'd also heard that turnips and parsnips can be planted and then harvested in the spring when planted in fall (we're up in zone 4a here).  I did plant some seeds several weeks ago, but nothing.  None of our parsnips came up at all this year.  It wouldn't be so bad if I could find them at farmer's markets but I can only find the ones covered in wax in the grocery store.  I have already decided to give up on carrots because they are easily found at the farmer's market during any time we'd be able to produce them and our nutrient rich compost makes for forked (but very small) carrots.  The turnips (and lettuce and kale) at farmer's markets are much better than we'd produced too - I'll leave those to the experts.  But, I've got to continue to try for the parsnips.
Our kale, which I'd heard tastes better after a frost, is very small but growing (the rabbits got to most of it a few weeks ago).  Now that it's past a frost date, I may harvest what little we have.  Every time I say that our harvest is over, I remember that there's still something edible to get out there, and that seems to be true until the snow flies.
Last year I planted some tulips bulbs in the fall, but this year I have no desire to plant more.  I enjoyed them when they came up until the rabbits bit off the tops.  If those come back up, I'll enjoy those too, but I would rather spend my daylight hours playing with our daughters since we spent so much time on our garden over the summer.  It's time for rest and relaxation.