Growing sprouts on a small budget

With just a few pennies and a few minutes a day you can have a very healthy serving of very yummy vegetables every day.  You don't really need to buy those kits with special jars and special lids with the "right" size holes in them for sprouting. 

I live in Ohio so the gardening season doesn't last as long as I would like.  Because there are more than 6 months without ready-to-pick fresh produce growing in the garden, I like to use sprouts in the winter.  I can't afford to buy sprouts in the store so I grow my own.  Even with the cost of buying the seeds, there is significant savings involved in growing your own sprouts.   $30 worth of seeds bought online, this includes shipping, will last more than a single winter for me.  I buy them separately and mix them in a pint jar.  They are kept in the freezer.  So for pennies a day you can have a daily serving of the freshest veggies possible.

Since I have canning jars available these days, that is what I use for growing my sprouts.  I simply cut the end out of knee high nylon stockings to put over the jar, then screw the ring on over the stocking.  If you only have the small mouth jars that is ok, the only difference between them and large mouth jars is that you have to pull the finished sprouts out, but it is an easy thing to do.

This is a small mouth quart jar with a square cut from a nylon stocking held on with a canning ring.  I stretch the nylon as tight as I can.

Alternatively, if you don't have canning jars, you could use jars that have been emptied of other stuff like peanut butter, mayonnaise, pickles, salsa, etc.  Only use the ones with plastic lids unless you have proper cutters to cut a metal lid.  I wouldn't want to use a metal lid anyhow, it could cause a cut on your fingers or hand.  Use a good sturdy knife to cut around the edge of the lid, cutting the top off and leaving the ring to hold the stocking on tightly.  I have used one of my ginsu knives on plastic lids.

Also, instead of a ring or other type of lid, you could use a strong rubber band to hold the stocking in place on the jar.

To begin, measure out your seeds and place into the jar, put in water to more than cover the seeds, cover the jar, and give it a shake.  I use a little less than 1 tablespoon of seeds in a quart jar.  Leave the jar sitting upright for about 24 hours, then rinse several times and set it upside down to drain.

Most directions I have read say to rinse your sprouts three times a day.  As far as I am concerned, that is the minimum requirement.  I keep my sprouts upside down on a saucer on the kitchen counter or in the dish drainer, I do dishes by hand so the drainer is usually on the counter top anyhow.  Every time I go to the kitchen, no matter what else I need to do there, I give each jar a rinse.  My sprouts grow in around 5 days.  I use a blend of red clover, alfalfa, broccoli, radish, and fenugreek.  You should find a good source for your sprout seeds and choose your own custom blend.  I buy mine from mountain rose herbs.  They are organic and kosher certified.

 

A jar in the dish drainer.  There is a north facing window here so there is no problem with direct sunlight from that one.  There is also an east facing window so I cover the jars at night with a dish towel before I go to bed so they won't get direct sunlight in the morning and become overheated in the jars.

Some directions say to keep the jars in the dark away from sunlight.  This is fine for the bigger bean and pea seeds that you want blanched white for those special recipes.   For the smaller seeded varieties, you should keep them on the counter where they are exposed to light but not direct sun.  This will cause the little plants on the outside to have green leaves, at this point they are loaded with nutrients including chlorophyll.  

This jar is about a day away from readiness :)

As you pour the water from the jars, the water might stop flowing, this is because of the nylon stocking.  It is holding back the water, just lightly slap the stocking with your fingers to release the surface tension and the water will flow again.  It works best when you hold the jar at an angle instead of completely upside down.

To have sprouts every day I keep two jars going at the same time, one is a few days behind the other.  Sometimes it happens that they are both being "harvested" on the same day but that is ok, the sprouts will last for a week or more if properly stored.

To store your sprouts, first you must rinse out the seeds.  I simply put the sprouts into a big mixing bowl, cover them with water, swish them around and pull them apart to loosen them up.  Then I hold onto the sprouts and pour the water with the seeds into a wire strainer.  Swish and drain several times until there are no more seeds left behind.  The seeds in the strainer go into the compost heap.  You want to get all the seeds out because they will start to spoil before the sprouts will and cause the sprouts to start spoiling.  Besides, I don't like running into a seed when I am eating my sprouts.

After a good rinsing, let your sprouts drain very well before storing them in a lidded bowl or a zip lock bag.  Excess moisture is an enemy to stored sprouts.  Sprouts will mold if there is too much moisture on them when they are stored.

I use my sprouts every day on sandwiches, or as a salad with a little vinaigrette on them.

Each variety of seed you use in your mix will give you some very healthful nutrients in your diet.  Many of them fight free radicals as well as having specific health benefits due to their vitamin content. 

New toy

I bought myself a Christmas present for the garden.  It is an Earthwise TC70001 11-Inch 8-1/2 Amp Electric Tiller/Cultivator.  I tried it out today, Dec. 3rd.  It is over 55 degrees and earlier it was not rainy but now it is.  

This tiller worked great, I am most happy with my purchase.  It was on sale on Amazon.  

Here is a little patch that it tilled up in just a few minutes.  I could have kept going but the garden needs to be cleared of the piles of dead plant material first.  The tiller can't be used on long vines or branches because they will wind around the axle.  I will save the tilling for spring.  At least I know it works like a charm.  I love it.

My plan for early spring is to till the entire area then cover some parts of it with the old hay I have waiting.  This will keep the weeds from growing, then I will remove it to the compost heap, or to mulch tomatoes or other plants, when I want to plant.  The areas that will have wide spaces between rows like the corn and pole beans will be left uncovered.  These will be regularly tilled throughout the summer to help keep weeds down, along with a little hoeing.  

The garden will be expanded next summer to 50' X 25'.  This should be enough to supply one person with vegetables for a year, and then some, weather and pests permitting. 

 

Growing sweet potato slips for next year's crop

Since sweet potato vines are pretty, in my opinion, I am going to grow them in a pot this winter.  My indoor greenhouse is still set up so they will get enough light in there.  I will plant them outside in the spring when the time is right.  But first I will have to grow the vines so that there will be a lot of leaves.

Wherever a leaf joins the stem, there is a place where the vine will send out roots if it is in moist soil or even if it is just placed in water.  It only takes a week to grow roots long enough to support the little plant.

Sweet potatoes will produce several crops of slips.  Here is the beginning of the first set of slips.  I got three from this batch.

Here they are after sticking them in water and growing the roots.   I picked off the leaves that would be under the soil when they are planted, leaving the ones that would remain above the soil even though where they join the stem will be under the soil.  Where the leaf joins the stem is where the roots grow.  

This is the same sweet potato with new sprouts on it, there are 6 this time.  Note the line marked on the side of the jar.  This allows me to keep the water line consistent.  The water gets changed daily.  

Here is the pot with 3 plants in it.  I think only two more will go in here.  Then I will have to start a new pot for the rest of the sprouts.

As the vines grow, naturally there will be more leaves.  In the spring, when it is about a week before planting time, I will cut the vines from the pot and lay them in a shallow pan of water to sprout.  There will be roots at every joint of leaf and stem.  Each leaf will make a new plant.  When I am ready to plant them out, I will simply cut the vine between the leaves to get the individual plants.  I will either sell or give away the extra ones. Or maybe I will just re-pot them and keep the vines going.

Planting garlic and growing sweet potato vine

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some bulbs of a thin neck garlic variety for my garden.  They sent 4 nice big bulbs.  I just finished planting half of them.  That made a 10 foot row with approximately 24 possible plants for next summer.  If this variety grows like the one plant I had this year that means I will have somewhere between 48 and 72 bulbs of garlic next summer.  And that is if I don't get the other two bulbs planted.  Vampires beware LOL  I can't wait until I can make a garlic braid out of it to hang in my kitchen.

About a week ago I took one of my cured sweet potatoes and put it in a jar of water, suspended with 3 toothpicks.  There are a few little sprouts on it now and some roots as well.  I will use this to get plants for next year's garden if I can keep it alive.  It is in my eastern kitchen window.

Update:

After three weeks of growth that sweet potato has some new healthy roots and 3 healthy shoots.  When the shoots reach 5-8 inches, depending on how many leaves there are on the vine, I will detach them from the potato and root them, then plant them in a pot to grow over the winter.

I was reading a very informative site about sweet potato growing.  It said to place a vine with several leaves in shallow water so that where every leaf joins the vine it is in the water.  Keep the water level constant and in a week there will be little roots at every leaf joint.  When the roots are long enough you then cut the vine between each leaf and you have your new sweet potato plants, or slips as they are called.  These can be planted directly in your garden.  It doesn't save time to transplant them to a pot then to the garden because they will have to go through transplant shock twice.  This will cause a set back in their growth.

I am Blessed by bounty

The beans and tomatoes have been keeping me busy these past few weeks.  To add to that, I went and bought a bushel of sweet corn and just finished canning it.  I got 20 pints, yippee!  :)

I now have equal to 9 quarts of canned tomatoes, approximately 30 dried and powdered tomatoes, 26 quarts of canned green beans and 20 pints of canned corn.

I have been looking through the ball canning book at the recipes.  This has made me want to make some of the yummy recipes I see in there so this winter I will be using the recipes that I pick out as a guideline for what I plant next year.

Yes I will plant corn.  Buying corn is the costly way to do it even though they only charge $3 per dozen or $17 per bushel and give you extra in case some are not good.  A 10X 10 plot will give me more than I bought this year so I might plant a 10 x 20 plot of corn next year.  That will give me some to eat fresh, give away and still be able to can more than there was this year.  It will definitely be an open pollinated variety, probably my old favorite, golden bantam, not to be confused with golden cross bantam which is a hybrid.  No hybrids in my garden if I can find an OP alternative.  I was planting golden bantam back in the 70's and 80's.

I am in the process of expanding the garden now by putting down cardboard and mulching it with grass clippings, mowed leaves, and old hay.  This makes the ground super fertile for next year as well as nicely killing the grass and weeds that are growing there.  I need to go to the dollar store and get some more of their boxes.  They break them down flat before they dispose of them anyhow so that is a great convenience for me.  All I have to do is be there on a day when they are stocking from boxes and have a lot of empty ones already on the cart.  They let me sort through them and take what I want.  I choose the ones that have only black lettering on them so there won't be any bad poisonous ink going on my garden.

That's all for today, there are more beans to break and can.  :)

Sweet potatoes

Today I dug under two plants and this is what I found by just digging with my hands, wearing gloves of course.  They weighed 4.8625 pounds.  The little one I found a couple of weeks ago would probably have tipped the scale to 5 pounds but I ate it last night.  It was soooo yummy :)  by far the best sweet potato I have ever eaten.

Using 8 foot long X 1" bamboo poles for trellises

I am very happy with the bamboo poles, they are strong and resilient.  At first I was skeptical when the slightest breeze knocked over my bamboo teepees.  But it turns out that after there is some weight pulling downward on them, they will not go anywhere.  We have had a few good windy storms since the trellises have been covered by beans and peas.  Every one of them were still standing after the storms.

Two of the trellises I built have a large load on them and they are still standing same as when I put them up.  They are the Italian beans/peas.  They look kind of wild, like pictures I have seen of kudzu in the south that has covered old buildings, automobiles, trees, etc.   These two rows were planted 3 feet apart and there is barely enough room between them to get in there and pick peas.  There is a canopy over the top between the two rows, made by tendrils from the two rows meeting and grabbing onto each other. 

Update:  First, I may have already added some of this information.  Forgive me if some of this is a repeat.  I have compared pictures of pea and bean varieties and have discovered that these are probably a variety of cow pea.  They look the same as pictures of cow peas I found on google images.

I wasn't going to plant these next year but I have changed my mind.  I picked all of them after they dried, then shelled them and they gave me about 4 pounds of shelled peas. An easy thing to do while watching TV.  And they are delicious.  

With the minimal amount of work involved in planting, harvesting and shelling these peas, I would say they are worth it in addition to all of the produce I gathered from my garden.  These are great for the occasional small pot of bean soup in the winter months.  With them in my diet, it is less boring.  What a treat they are.

Here are my Italian Fagolina cow peas in a gallon freezer bag.  As you can see, comparing them to the dime, they are very small.

Harvesting

It's awesome!  I started picking beans Friday.  I had a nice soup made from green beans, red skinned potatoes and carrots, all from my garden.

Pole beans behind 2 tomato plants

Yesterday I picked more beans and some chard.  There was also some banana peppers, half a green bell pepper, and some okra that a friend gave me.  I cooked it all together and added a little wine and some curry spice.  Oh yummmm it was wonderful.  It made a large pan full so there is more for today and tomorrow too.  I would feel like I was in heaven if I lived somewhere tropical so I could eat fresh from the garden every day like this.

bad pic of my strawberry patch, I was using my phone and couldn't see where it was pointed.  You can see that I have a crab grass problem.

There were also some more strawberries to pick yesterday.  They are almost done producing.  There are no more new blossoms.  They are now putting out runners.  I was picking them off but now I will let them grow so I can expand the number of plants for next year.  They are ever bearers so they won't last for more than 2 or 3 years before their production declines so every year I will let some plants set runners in order to replenish the strawberry patch. 

I took this picture to show all the blossoms on the beans, you will have to click to enlarge it to see the blossoms

I pulled up all the remaining carrots yesterday and am preparing that patch for planting collards, spinach, and kale for fall/winter.  I hope the winter holds off long enough for me to get some greens from them.  I am thinking about using the pvc trellis I made for the squash as a cover for the greens.  By the time the greens need the cover, the squash will no longer need the trellis. 

Here is my Italian fagiolina beans that I think are peas because the blossoms look like sweet peas.  I went to google images and found some plants that look like this and they are called cow peas.  The peas in the pod are very tiny and the pods are half as thin as a pencil.  They are delicious eaten as a young pod or left to mature and eaten as soup beans/peas.  Whatever they are lol.  In the foreground is the squash that I finally was able to save from being destroyed by the birds.  I had to replant them twice.  They may not have time to mature since they got such a late start.  I won't have half the number of squash that I had last year.  Hopefully the sweet potatoes will make up for that.  See the pic of them below.

A bird must have dropped a seed and a corn stalk grew between my sweet potatoes and pole beans.  So I let it grow for visual interest.  I can't wait for the sweet potatoes to be finished.  I want to dig under one plant to see what, if anything is growing.  I bought these as Georgia Jets.  Then I read somewhere online that some companies sell a different variety as Jets and that Jets should get red blossoms and if they don't, they are not true Georgia Jets.  Hmm, that deserves further investigation.

Yesterday I also got 2 pints of roma tomatoes canned.  LOL, yes only 2 pints, but it is a start.  Last year there were hardly any red tomatoes.  This year it looks like the plants will be overrun with nice ripe red tomatoes.  I have a slug problem so I pick the tomatoes a little early and let them ripen in the house.  I am using a product called escar-go by gardens alive.  It works, is organic, but needs to be spread every 2 weeks.  It goes a long way because it is spread very thin.  I think I will put out a few saucers of beer tonight and see if it lives up to what is claims. 

The red tomatoes you see here are beefsteak variety, I forget what it is called.  Maybe beefsteak LOL.  The plant to the right is an unknown.  It was a volunteer from last year so I transplanted it because there was space for it.  It is either a Rutgers or another OP variety that gets huge, I mean huge tomatoes on it.  We will see if/when they grow, this plant got a late start. 

Today's harvest

And now it begins :)  I'm doing a happy dance

If I only had beans :( could have some good veggie soup

Rain

Yesterday and the day before we finally had a significant amount of rain.  The garden looks so much better now.  So do the dang weeds!  LOL

The beans are flowering, and the Italian peas are blooming also, it is easy to miss the pea blooms and I found a few pods on the plants already.  As I said last year, these need to be picked daily because they produce over a nice long period of time, like the pole beans. 

I ate a carrot from the garden last week, yummmm, should have a few more in a week or 2, I tried to get one out of the ground a few days ago and it wouldn't budge, the ground was too hard.  Tomorrow I will try again and see if I can get the biggest ones out. 

The chard is still producing nicely.  There are two plants and I get a nice bunch to eat about every 3-4 days.  I like to wilt it with some vinaigrette, wine, a few drops of liquid smoke, a bit of sugar and a little water.  I planted 4 more a few weeks ago but I don't think they will grow.  There wasn't enough moisture even though I watered the spot every day.  Maybe it was too hot.  Some seeds don't like to grow when it is too hot out.

Hot summer

It certainly has been a hot hot hot summer so far.  Today we have heat warnings in effect.  The temp will be between 105 and 115.  This is almost unheard of here.  And with the humidity we always have, it will be too uncomfortable to be outdoors.  I went out this morning around 6:30 and watered my patio plants, my little lilac and rose bushes and my two remaining raspberry plants. 

The blueberry plants are dead.  All but 2 raspberry plants are dead.  The soil I have here drains almost too well.  There is a lot of sand and the water just percolates through it.  It will be a few years before I have accumulated enough organic matter in the soil to help it hold moisture.

With that said,  I have been watering half the garden one day and the other half the next.  I have been hand watering because 1 of my 4 soaker hoses won't water anymore, there is some sort of blockage in it,  and two of them have sprung leaks that create fountains lol.  In this heat I have been going out after dark when it is cooler to water.  It takes me 30-45 minutes to get it done.

 The garden from the south east corner.  There is the pvc squash trellis I made last year.  This year I planned to have 5 butternut squash plants on it but there are only 2 and one will probably not give me ripe squash before fall sets in.  That's ok though, they are good eating when they are small.  You can eat them like summer squash, skin and all.  Very tasty.  The reason there are only 2 plants is since the weather has been so very dry, the birds visit my garden every time I water to peck worms and bugs out of the ground.  In the process, they also peck my young plants to death.  This is what happened to my carrots and squash.  Both had to be replanted and covered with bird netting to keep birds off.  I feel sorry for the birds.  Food and water are scarce for them this year.  If I had the money for it, I would have a bird bath in the yard.

 This is not a very sharp image.  There are red potatoes here.  Behind them are the Italian peas.  I saved seed from last year and they are doing fantastic in this heat.  They seem to thrive in this hot dry summer.  They have already grown bigger than they did last year.  I can't wait to eat some.  I doubt any will get canned, they will all be eaten fresh and of course some will be allowed to go to seed for next year's crop.  Off to the left of the peas you can see the remains of my borage.  It has flowered, had hundreds of bees on it and now is starting to dye off.  But there are more of them growing so there should be more soon.  In front of the borage is the sage and horehound.

 Ahhh, here we have my one little tomatillo plant in the cage.  It got started a bit late but there are little tomatillos on it already.  To the right of the tomatillo are two rhubarb plants that survived of the 4 I started with.  They are multiplying like gangbusters.  Next spring I will have a nice little bit of them to taste.  Behind the rhubarb is the peas. 

 This is my Mother's day rose :)  Poor thing, it is so hot.  There were 2 pretty little flowers on it last week. 

 There are 7 tomato plants here.  From front to back, one cherry tomato plant that only gets about 4 feet tall but there are loads of delicioius tomatoes.  I pick them almost every day now.  Behind that is a volunteer from last year that I moved.  I don't know which variety it is but I suspect it is the beefsteak type  that I had last year.  Third is another beefsteak type.  In a couple of days I will be eating green fried tomatoes again.  Yummmmy.  Then there are 4 roma plants. I like to eat them fresh as well as can them.  They are so tasty.

 This is a view from the north side of the garden.  It shows the sweet potato hill in front of the pole beans. 

The sweet potatoes, as promised, truly love this hot weather.  Hopefully there will be a nice crop of them to dig before fall hits. They are Georgia Jets.  These are said to mature at 95 days.  That's plenty of time.  I found a website that explains that it isn't so much the number of days that sweet potatoes need to grow, it is the number of heat units during the growing season.  You need a specific number of heat units to be able to get sweet potatoes to grow.  Being a short season variety, these will be just fine as long as our hot hot hot summer continues.  

And oh yes, there is one corn stalk LOL.  Must be a bird or squirrel "dropped" a seed.  I have let it grow just for visual interest.

I had to replant the pole beans.  They are no longer Kentucky wonders.  They are now blue lake.  Eh, that's ok, I have planted them in the past too.  They are also OP so I can save some seed for next year.  A rabbit chewed through my plastic mesh rabbit fence and ate all 3 rows of beans down to little nubbins.  Luckily I was able to find some more seed at the local greenhouse.  And I went to Menards for the WIRE rabbit fence. 

There have been some problems with the bamboo bean poles.  The wind knocks them over even without a load on them.  I am thinking that there will be more trouble with them.  There is one that continues to fall over and the ground is too hard now to push it in farther so I splayed the legs out more, hoping that will help.  Maybe I should do that for all of them.  I am hoping that when there is a load on the top poles, the entire thing will be more steady.  But then again, if it gets windy it might just be a huge sail.    Wait and see.   

 Ahhhh  Strawberries.  I  never grew strawberries before.  Should have.  Yesterday I went out and spread some of my old hay around them so the berries won't get dirty and it will keep the moisture in as well.  There are many nice little berries here.  There are also some plants without berries.  I let them develop runners to make new plants.  Those will be used to expand the strawberry bed next year.  Every year I will let a few of them set runners so I will have new plants every year.  These are ever bearing strawberries so, as I understand, they only last 3-4 years then the berries get smaller so I think it best to let a few new ones grow every year to be able to rotate them and every year I will get nice berries.  Hopefully.  These did well, out of 25 only one died and one was pecked to almost nothing by birds but it has had time to recover. 

There is bird netting around the strawberries.  Those pesky birds are NOT going to get my berries!  If you notice the poles laying on the ground around the strawberry bed, they are holding down the edges of the bird netting.  The netting is attached, at the 4 corners of the bed, to bamboo poles about 18" off the ground, there is about 6-8 inches laying on the ground.  I used zip ties to attach the netting to the poles.  When I want to get in, I simply remove the poles on the ground  on 3 sides, remove 2 of the bamboo poles and walk them to the other side to lay them down.  When I am done, I just put the bamboo poles back in their holes, make sure there are no gaps around the edges and replace the poles on the 3 sides to keep the birds out.  Easy Peasy.

Will it ever get going?

6-7-12
ok enough already with the rabbits who have the munchies.  They ate ALL of my pole beans...all of them :(    Soooo today I went out and bought some chicken wire to keep them out.  Sheesh

6-8-12
Yesterday I went to Menards and bought some chicken wire to put around the garden, then proceeded to put it up, it took some work but it's finished.  I bought 4' fencing so that I could bend about 18" of it at the bottom to help keep rabbits from digging underneath the fence.

Today I replanted the three 10 foot rows of pole beans.  The first time around I had kentucky wonder beans,which I had last year, both green and yellow.  This time I have blue lake, which is what the local greenhouse had on hand.  This might be a good thing, this way I can decide which I like better.
Both varieties are OP so I can save the seed of either.

I had to replant squash.  It's getting almost too late to be doing that.  Squash needs a long season.  The birds keep pecking it out of the ground in search of worms in the wet dirt.  I water with a soaker hose so the wet dirt is always where the seeds and plants are.  Note; put up some bird netting to keep them out of the squash seeds :)  Hmmm maybe it is the rabbits, the squash is not inside the fence.

Today I also thinned out the peas I planted too thickly.  They would have been very overcrowded.

A couple of days ago I picked my first two cherry tomatoes.  Yesterday I ate one and today I ate the other one :)  Today I also picked 4 more of them but they won't be ready to eat for a few days yet.  Soon there will be handsful every few days for the rest of the summer, happy happy :)

The roma tomatoes are doing quite well, they are growing nicely and there are flowers all over them.

I can't get carrots to grow.  There are only 20 of them out there now, there should be hundreds.  But I will take what I can get, I love love carrots.

The rhubarb is doing nicely even if only 2 of the original 4 lived.  To be fair, one was DOA when I opened the package to plant them.  They will fill in the area where I planted in a couple of years.

The strawberry plants seem to have stalled, maybe I should fertilize them a little.  I'll google it to find out what to do.  Ok, I googled it....too late this year to fertilize them.  It needs to be done before new growth in the spring.

Only one sweet potato plant has been lost so far, out of 10 that is ok with me as long as no more of them die.  That doesn't seem likely.  The rest of them look very healthy and are showing good growth.

I have been getting enough spinach and chard for a nice addition to my meals every few days, and only from one spinach plant and 2 chard plants.   I planted some more spinach a few days ago but I will have to go without it for a few weeks.  The plant I am picking now is giving smaller and smaller leaves.  Pretty soon it will be flowering. 

May 17 '12

Here I am again :)  This picture is of where the sweet potatoes are going to be  planted.  I received 25 slips in the mail a couple of days ago.  Now I have to wait for the weather to settle.  I found a website that gives precise information about the heat needed for sweet potatoes to grow and produce well.  In our area (zone 4b), they should not be planted until the middle of June.  I have hilled the soil and placed black plastic in hopes this will warm the soil enough to plant a little earlier than that.  I have georgia jets that have a maturity of 85-90 days, fine for our short growing season.   There is space for 9 or 10 plants to be set out.....this year :)  If they do well, I will plant more next year.  

I wanted more of an herb garden but the space just is not there for it.  Here are two of my plants from last year, a horehound and a sage.  Off to the right of the sage mound there is a new seedling that volunteered from last year's plant.  It is borage.  Borage has flowers that bees love so is a good plant to have in the garden to attract those little pollinators. 

This is supposed to be a square foot garden LOL.  After almost a month in the ground the carrots and onions are just beginning to come up and I think it will not be all of that I planted.  I will just have to wait and see what comes up then fill in the spaces.  All the little seedlings are sweet annie.  That plant reseeds profusely (much like the borage above)so I will never have to buy seeds again :)  I will just thin them, then pick one out and transplant it.  That is it for my 4 herbs in the garden.....

Above is a pic of one of my rhubarb plants that I put out.  3 out of 4 made it so I am happy with them.  Darn it!  Another one that I have to wait at least a year to get a taste LOL

It looks like 8 of the 10 red skinned potatoes I laid on the ground have sprouted.  The others may have sprouted and are just not peeking out of the hay stack yet :)

I broke down and bought this lilac bush at the grocery store.  It is doing well.  There are lots of new leaves on it.

This is a poor pic of the red raspberry stick LOL.  At the very top of the stick you can see leaves Yayyyy.  Out of 8 that I set out, only 4 are showing new growth.  Some of them are growing shoots from the roots instead of leaves on the above ground stick.  I hope that the remaining bare ones are simply taking their sweet time about it.  :)  There are 2 different varieties.  5 of them are Caroline variety.   3 of them are Heritage variety.

A mostly good beginning

Today I decided to take the chance and plant my tomato plants.  The big one in the foreground is from Sell's greenhouse.  They always have huge plants available.  This one has several nice green cherry tomatoes almost fully grown now.  before the end of this month I will be eating ripe tomatoes.  :)

See the bamboo teepees?  I am using them this year along with sisal twine for trellises.

I also planted 4 romas and one beefsteak type.  There is a space saved for another variety of roma.  There will also be a tomatillo planted somewhere in there. 

This is a general view of the strawberry patch in the foreground, sage and horehound in the middle and the red potatoes covered by old hay.  The potatoes are about a foot high now.  I planted them very early when we had the unseasonably warm weather on March.  I will have to remember to harvest some horehound tomorrow.  Maybe some sage too.

Between the potatoes and fence in the back is where the rhubarb will live.  

Speaking of rhubarb, this shows the placement of 3 of the 4 I put out today.  The order I  received should have had 6 but there were only 4 and I believe one is dead but I put it out anyhow in the hopes that it is still dormant.  The others had a little bud on new growth though so I am not hopeful that the one will live.  Oh well, they will grow fast.  They went into a spot that has a lot of nice organic matter in the soil.  Can't wait for next year's garden.  I will also have blueberries and red raspberries next year.

Here is my second planting of strawberries.  They look really good, there is new growth, they seem to have taken to their new home very well.  They are day neutral so I need to pick any flowers off until the first part of July, then I can let them produce berries.  They will probably be small but will be sooooo much better than store bought.  Oh Yeah!

I don't have a picture of it but a few of my red raspberry sticks that I planted have some tiny new buds on them  Yayyyyy

The lilac bush that I planted by the shed is beginning to be covered with a lot of new leaf buds.  Next year there will be a few posies on it. 

Oh I almost forgot.  The carrots are NOT coming up :((  I think they were planted too deep.  Who did that?  LOL   "sigh"  I will have to replant that entire patch......argh

There are some beets coming up as well as some spinach.

Square foot garden experiment and the teepee experiment

Finally I am trying square foot gardening in my garden.  It will be 4 feet by 10 feet and contain carrots, beets, onions, kale, collards, spinach, mustard and chard.  If all goes will it will give me greens and veggies for several months, hopefully well into winter.

The above image shows where the square foot garden is.  See the poles and cat litter bucket (my garden seat)?  That is where the north end of the square foot garden is located.  Today I planted 8 of the 40 squares.  Over the next week it will be finished, it looks like the weather isn't going to be cooperative for the next couple of days.  The two plants are my hoarhound and sage plants from last year.  We had such a mild winter this year that the sage plant never went dormant, it stayed green all winter.

The image below shows where the red potatoes have been placed.  I put them in a month ago.  They are hiding under that pile of old hay.  To the left and behind there is the place where the sweet potatoes are going in.  In front of the two green plants is where the strawberries will be.

Last but not least is the area where beans and peas will be.  I put up these bamboo tripods, or teepees, the other day to see how well they will stand, and to help mark the area so I would know where to put the square foot garden.  I needed to know how much area they will require.  I have never really lashed a teepee tripod before.  A little learning curve is all it took to get them ready.  I went to youtube and learned how :)  I'm using sisal twine for the lashings.  It was easy peasy.  All is good to go. 

Come on Summer!  Let's roll!

Spring 2012 Easter day April 8

So begins the new gardening year.  There isn't much to do yet but I have the rabbit fence up and planting plans on paper.  There will be new additions this year.  I will attempt  to grow everbearing strawberries and sweet potatoes, two things I have never grown.  This should be fun.

As you can see in the picture, I have the fence up and some bales of old hay to use as mulch.  I have begun to extend the garden towards the back (east) by a few more feet.  That new area is on the other side of the fence and will be growing tomatoes and butternut squash.

Inside the fence will be the usual beans, peas, red potatoes, some herbs...and some strawberries if I can get these to grow.  I am really looking forward to growing sweet potatoes.  I love them.  Last year I didn't have room for broccoli, carrots or greens, these are in the plans for this year, along with a short row of broccoli for fresh eating.  

For greens I will plant kale, collards, spinach, mustard, and chard.  They will go in a few plants at a time, every few weeks, so I will (hopefully) get a steady supply of some greens all summer and, weather permitting, into next winter.

The beans will be pole type, both green and yellow.  I really like the yellow ones and prefer the taste of them over the green ones but the green ones grow better and produce more in my experience.  

I will use last year's conduit for trellising this year but will buy some bamboo poles to make the rest of the trellises I will need,  There will be 9 or10 trellises, 3 for green/yellow beans, 1 for bantu beans, 1 or2 for italian peas, 1 for squash, 2 for tomaotes, 1 for sweet potatoes.  Using the bamboo poles I will make tripods @ 3 to a, row then span 2 poles across the top of the 3 tripods to support the growing veggies.  I think the bamboo will look much nicer than the metal conduit.  I have purchased 2500 feet of sisal twine to make the trellis netting for the veggies to climb.  More fun  hehehe :)

There are two other things I am planting this year.  This strange looking picture shows where they will be planted.  The picture shows the north end of the garden area where the hay bales are and the expanse of lawn between the garden and the street.  I have played with the picture a little to show where the garden will be expanded for next year, also to show where the red raspberry and blueberry plants will go.  At first I will plant just 5 raspberry plants and 3 blueberry plants.  The raspberries I have chosen are ever bearing so I can expand them next year by taking cuttings in the spring.  The blueberries are 3 different high bush varieties that will ripen over an extended period.