I think I've done it

Created our garden neighborhoods, that is.

Because we expanded our crop selection this year, I had to (yet again) adjust our bed layout with pests and companions in mind. To make this more difficult, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't re-planting a bed with the same item in the same location. So this year if I combined squash and collards, I needed to do so carefully.

I knew we were rotating the tomatoes to the furthest east bed since it hadn't seen a member of the solanaceae family since 2007, which should have allow for enough time for any soil bacteria or other nasties to subside. So that was my leaping off point for the other two beds.

The end result is the following rudimentary outline:

East Bed: Tomato, Red Onion, Yellow Onion, Leek
Middle Bed: Cucumber, Squash, Corn, Collards, Kale, Radish, Lettuce, Carrot, Garlic
West Bed: Beans, Peas, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Carrots

Eventually I need to break this out further into what varieties will go in each location. Some particular items may move - like I may plant pole beans with the corn and squash in the traditional Three Sisters combination.

There will also be a LOT of interplanting with herbs and vegetables. More than last year. It's going to be very dynamic and biodiverse. Exciting stuff!

2010 To Do List

Getting an early jump on things this year. Some of these items may be "wish list" to-dos, others are more mandatory. In no particular order:

• Re-do the fireplace bed
• Finish overseeding the last of the backyard
• Plant out the front walkway beds
• Get rid of the barberry bush
• Fill in holes in the yard
• Buy and install a rain barrel
• Put in stepping stone path
• Outdoor lighting
  
• Design, create and install screens for the arbor
• Finish master plan of the yard
  

Book Review - Great Garden Companions

I picked this book up from the library to try and expand my knowledge of companion planting. Last year worked well, but I was sure there was room for improvement.

Suffice to say, after spending a few hours reading it, I ran off to Barnes & Noble to order my own copy. It contains general principles and then details on each type of crop. It also has information on how to best attract beneficial insects, plants that may keep pests away, and information on each type of garden pest and how to deal with it.

We're going to be putting some of these theories to practice this year.

2010 Vegetable garden

Inspired by Skippy's Vegetable Garden, I started to put a comparison together of the last two years. The idea being it would help me sort out what we want to grow this year. We decided to pretty much scrap the tomato varieties we'd tried so far and search for something new. Same with the bell peppers. I'm going to give cucumbers a shot one more year - this time a new variety from seed. I still haven't figured out what lettuce variety we'll get. We may just go with what we grew last year. Milaeger's is our local nursery who we've used the last 3 years. SSE = Seed Savers Exchange.

So here's the list for 2010 so far. Once I get the beds plotted out, I'll post that as well!

Crop, type	Variety	Source	Seed or Transplant?
Beans, green	Derby Bush	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Empress	SSE	Seed
	Royalty Purple Pod	SSE	Seed
	Dragon's Tongue	SSE	Seed
Beans, shell	Calypso	SSE	Seed
	Cherokee Trail of Tears	SSE	Seed
	Ireland Creek Annie	SSE	Seed
Carrots	Royal Chantenay	Milaeger's	Transplant
	St. Valery	SSE	Seed
Collard green	Champion	Milaeger's	Transplant
Corn	Reid's Yellow Dent	SSE	Seed
Cucumber	Double Yield	SSE	Seed
	Japanese Climbing	SSE	Seed
Eggplant	Park's Whopper Hybrid	Milaeger's	Transplant
Garlic	softneck	Milaeger's	Transplant
Kale	Winterbor	Home Depot	Transplant
Leek	American Flag	Milaeger's	Transplant
Lettuce	Bistro Salad Blend	Milaeger's	Transplant
Onion, Red	Red Burgermaster	Milaeger's	Transplant
Onion, Yellow	Copra	Milaeger's	Transplant
peas	Dwarf Gray Sugar	SSE	Seed
	Green Arrow	SSE	Seed
Pepper	Blushing Beauty (yellow)	Milaeger's	Transplant
	King of the North (green/red)	SSE	Transplant
	Valencia (orange)	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Sweet Chocolate (brown)	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Tiburon Poblano	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Mucho Nacho Jalapeno	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Orange Habanero	Milaeger's	Transplant
Radish	Early Scarlet Globe	SSE	Seed
Shallot		Milaeger's	Transplant
Spinach	Bloomsdale	SSE	Seed
Squash, Summer	Enterprise	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Black Beauty Zucchini	SSE	Seed
	Spineless Beauty	Milaeger's	Transplant
Squash, Winter	Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck	SSE	Seed
Swiss Chard	Five Color Silverbeet	SSE	Seed
Tomatillo	Toma Verde	Milaeger's	Transplant
Tomato	Early Girl	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Jet Star	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Rose	Milaeger's	Transplant
	Opalka	Milaeger's	Transplant

Poor, neglected blog

Fall ended up being crazy for both of us. Work sucked up what free time we had.

Also, we ended up with a new addition to the family:



That's Indy. She's an outsized miniature poodle with a lot of spunk. She's a rescue from a local organization, so she's needed to learn some basic commands and we've had to build up her confidence (she was very shy and jumpy at first). She is also a serious bird/game dog - she flushes birds and games better than my ILs two goldens. She is also a digger, so we'll have to do a lot of re-direct training this spring. But she's sweet and playful and we're looking forward to springtime with her.



To round out the year, we ended up overseeding about 2/3 of the back lawn. I could see the new grass coming up before the first freeze, so I think that's a success. We'll see how it looks in a few months.

The final 2009 To-Do List doesn't look too done though. Kind of disappointing, but that's life.

• Finish master plan of the yard
• Re-landscape west wall bed (aka fireplace bed)
• Get rid of barberry bush in back
• Place stepping stones from garage to back yard
  
• Clear out back woods
  
• Re-landscape garage bed
• Re-level brick patio
• Power-wash trellis and mailbox post
• Fill in holes in front bed (dead junipers and rose bushes)
• Plan out vegetable garden
• Re-mulch front yard beds
• Look at and either remove or repair yard sink
• Trim large bush trio in back
• Prune Mugo out front after killing the evil sawflies

A commenter in the last post had asked about the barberry bush that we plan to rip out and how we're planning to do that. Well, simply, we're digging it out. It's a fairly small bush, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Having dug up two very large junipers and two 12'+ apple trees, this little guy should be easy. If the bush were larger, I would probably cut it back severely and then dig the root system out as best I could, using a nice sharp spade to cut thru the roots where possible. I wouldn't recommend using a truck or the like to rip out any large, well-rooted bush, though. Odds are you'd rip the bumper off before taking the bush out.

Predictions for 2010:

We'll be trying to grow vegetables from SEED this year. I'm only using ones we can directly sow in the ground, as I have no patience for everything involved with sowing in flats indoors. I'm currently thinking we'll use this to experiment with a few different varieties and get the majority of our "must haves" from the nursery still.

As I said, we'll be working with Indy on not digging her way to China. Lucky was taught (by my sister's standard poodle, ironically) to dig in the sandbox, so we'll work on training her that way.

Fall Kitchen Work

Rosemary, Oregano and Parsley - dried for winter use

Tomatoes, halved and seeded and ready for dehydrating

Finished Product - Oven-dried Tomatoes

Tomatillos, whole and in a bit of water

Finished product - ready for use in salsas, stews, chili, etc.

Today I have some jalapenos I'm going to dehydrate. We also got our first good frost last night (it's currently 34°), so I'm going to go thru the garden and pick whatever may be left.

In other yardwork, we have to mow the lawn and then overseed the backyard. We disagree on where we're going to overseed (we only bought enough to do about half the back). I think we should seed where the grass is thinnest - towards the back of the yard - and Eric thinks we should seed where we spend the most time, even though the grass there is plenty thick and grows well.

Putting Food By

Well, with the start of fall harvest comes the start of putting food aside for the winter.

Last weekend I turned about 1/3 of the collards I harvested into Sukuma Wiki (the rest went to my sister, probably for the same purpose). There's still more collards coming in, so I may have to do another batch.

Last night I spent the night turning several pounds of tomatoes into my Red-Wine Marinara Sauce. I have about 20 lbs ripening in the bag and about as many still on the vine.

Some time in the near future I'm going to pull out some tray-frozen peppers from last year and turn them into Roasted Tomato and Pepper Sauce, along with this year's peppers.

I only ended up with a handful of jalapenos this year - not enough to justify smoking and drying them into chipotles. I may just turn them all into poppers to eat now or try my hand at pickling.

Harvest

Jalapenos, one gigantic tomato (Better Boy?), several plum tomatoes, a couple romas, more beans, one squash, a couple peppers.


And several pounds of collards to be blanched and frozen, turned into sukuma wiki, or eaten fresh this week.


Happy (almost) September!

Garden update

My tomato plants have been hit by some form of spot disease. I think it's bacterial.



I trimmed away the worst of the affected leaves. The fruit seems to be just fine so far. In fact, we have a tomato the size of a bocce ball that's almost ripe. And the plants pictured here? Crazy producers. I'm going to have some amazing marinara this year. Also, if you look carefully in the first photo you can see our tomatillo plants and all the fruit it's set. Love.It.

The garlic we grew this year actually doesn't suck! I have to admit I was nervous. I dug it up when they said to, but the bulbs were so small. But I took one of them and tried cooking with it and, wow. Delish. Spicy and flavorful.

The onions are almost ready to come out, I think. Our yellow ones are beautiful and large. I can't wait to cook with them.

I think the bush beans and the peapods have finally kicked the bucket.

I don't know if our habanero will ever produce. Our poblano seems to be done after just two peppers. Green peppers are doing just fine and the jalapenos are doing ok. Not as crazy as last year but we didn't have much hot weather this year.

The lettuce? Came back. Gah. I may have to ding-dong-ditch with lettuce this year.

Our zucchini plant got vine borers, so that got dug up and thrown out. I'm scared to see what all this rain has done to my remaining squash plant. It had set more fruit a week ago but I've been unable to go check on it all this week.

I need to harvest, blanch and stew the collards. I think I may just make a ginormous pot of sukuma wiki and be done with it.

I've been harvesting and drying herbs for the winter. I love my oven's dehydration feature. I have a boatload of fresh dried parsley and rosemary. The oregano and basil are next.

Garden Recipes

Now that the garden is starting to swing into full production, I thought I'd share a couple recent kitchen creations using in-season vegetables.

Garden Bounty Minestrone - this was a tasty way to use up zucchini, squash, beans and pea pods.
Creamy Orzo Primavera - a spin on pasta primavera, using more beans and pea pods
Spinach-Stuffed Pork Chops - using spinach, a spring onion and fresh herbs. and bacon. because bacon makes everything better

The following are from last year that are worth a repeat:
Caesar Salad with Croutons - a great way to use the last of the lettuce for this year
Sukuma Wiki - collards, collards and more collards. goes GREAT with BBQ.

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