Rule #34: Breath in and out and take it one day at a time when coming back to your garden after your vacation!

It's been a while since my last post, but the garden has been thriving and providing for us.  The lettuces are on their way out, but lasted longer with all the overcast days and rain.  Oh the rain.  There was a lot of it.  Not typical of Maryland to still have green grass in mid-July.

So we took a 10 day trip out to New Mexico right at the time that the garden started producing tons of harvests!  Needless to say, when we got home we found many surprises.  Since there was so much rain even after we left the watering was not an issue, but the weeds were so out of control.  The first thing I had to tackle (besides settling back in, cleaning and doing laundry!) was harvesting.  We had tons of cucumbers, green beans, chard, and our first ripe tomato.  There were also a couple of crookneck squash.  First surprise (or not really for me) was that though I was diligent about finding and taking off SVB eggs from the zucchini plants there were larva in every one of them.  Even in my test pot on the patio :(.  I preformed another surgery and think that half may survive.  Oh well.  What can you do?  Next surprise was that the voluntary plant coming out of the rock border of our new bed was a pumpkin!  OH DEAR....there is no room for you baby!  It was in the butternut squash bed that was already at full capacity.  I also found 2 butternuts that look pretty ready, but I have never grown them so I have to look it up to make sure I can pick them.  I haven't even touched the asian greens but they were eaten up pretty good and I will try to nurture them better for a fall harvest.

Today I started weeding and with the little tool we have it really hasn't been too bad and everything is coming up easily.  Unfortunately John only had time to do mowing before he had to go out of town for work or it would have been finished by now.  The tomatoes or so full it's ridiculous and (finger crossed) it seems like there are a lot less squirrels in the garden now that the tree is not in there any more.

On to sowing the winter radicchio!  Hopefully I will post about it soon...

A shot of the garden before we left during the crazy storms!

Out of control garden upon our return a few days ago!

First Haul

First half of the green bean bed!

First blueberry harvest!

Second half of the green bean bed on day 2 of return and another  squash

Rule #33: Try not to overcrowd, as tempting as it may be!

I have learned this with tomatoes especially over the years.  They get big and need plenty of sunlight.  Overcrowding them makes it hard to find the fruit and I feel they are also less productive.  With the garden expansion this will be an easier rule to follow!
For the past three weeks we have been eating the last of the lettuce that overwintered from the fall planting.  Now we can move on to the new lettuces I planted a few weeks ago.  We had the first of our baby arugula and I will continue to succession plant this all summer because we love the tender baby arugula (especially on pizza!).  We have gotten a few small strawberries this past week, but many of the plants got damaged and needed to be transplanted after the tree came down.  Strawberry plants do pretty well with trauma and and bouncing back with vigor.  The asian greens (tatsoi and chinese broccoli) have started to sprout and I am excited about these.  The girls loved the greens when we went to dim sum a few months ago so I hope this variety tastes similar.  It has been cooler than normal around here so the lettuces are quite happy, but the newly transplanted tomatoes may not be as fond of these temps.  Some of the larger ones are doing well but the smaller ones had a harder time after the transplant.  They are bouncing back now though.  I had to spray them and the eggplant leaves with an organic pesticide because of the dreaded flea beetle.  They just love those tender leaves but luckily they go away once the leaves become bigger and less appetizing to them.  The peppers on the other hand are doing great with no flea beetles.  The early indoor start helped them the most.  Yesterday John took off so I got to finish planting the rest of the beds.  Dad gave me two varieties of butternut squash (four plants total)  and those went into one of the new beds.  I also planted shelling beans, beets, carrots, fennel, broccoli rabe, and replanted three varieties of zucchini.  The first round only had one successful sprout!  I am determined not to let the squash vine borer devastate my zucchini this year and I may resort to the organic BT that I have been reading up on. I have tried everything in years past and I  want to have so many zucchini that I go around late at night putting zucchini on neighbors porches.  As some of you know zucchini and green beans are my favorite and I have finally dedicated one whole bed to green beans and that has worked for me, but the zucchini has been a battle.  I am trying a new hybrid variety of cucumber this year called Amiga so I am hoping for a good cucumber year.  The girls also love cucumbers!!!!  Lastly, the green bean bed is coming along nicely and most of those sprounts are up and growing.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:  I have officially (and finally in John's words) agreed to the design plans for our outdoor pizza oven and prep area/sit up counter area.  Now I told him I don't care when he starts it, but he can't blame me for any more hold ups!

*****Havest Monday (June 3):  My shelling beans and broccoli rabe have sprouted.  But I am not sure how all the young plants will like all this heavy rain we have been getting since last night into this morning!!!!  *********

Finally got these in a pot....experiment year with bougainvillea.

Wish geraniums came in orange.  I just love orange and purple but I also love geraniums!

Patio herb collection.  Rosemary found a new home in the yard and basil always goes in the garden.

Baby asian greens

Butternut squash bed and in the back part of the green bean bed.

New lettuces will need to be thinned.

Arugula and swiss chard.  In the front left corner is a store bought Early Girl tomato a neighbor gave me.

Eggplant with flea beetle damage

Happy Peppers

Close up of the baby arugula

garden view

Garden view from upstairs.  Raspberries are going crazy on the left fence.  We had to transplant our grape plants around the tree stump.  They were not happy but I am hoping the perk up!

I think I forgot to post this a few months back.  Next year I will continue to perfect puntarella growing.  Have to pick them earlier before the hearts start to rot.  Pictured are the leaves and a baby point.  It was delicious so at least I know they taste good.  The greens were starting to go to seed at this point but this was also later in the season.  Early when the greens were more tender they were less fibrous and very tasty.

The State of the Garden....Rule #32: IT'S OK!!!!!

So...it has been a crazy spring.  Cold and windy at times.  We had the hoop house up for some time and we continued to get radicchio and arugula through March and part of April.  Once we got a few hot days and the hoop house came off they bolted.  I am really getting anxious about how behind I am with the planting this spring, but I guess I should just go with the flow since our garden is in the middle of a major expansion!  We had a few of our gumball trees taken out recently which meant taking the garden apart since the largest one was actually in the garden!  I am so excited about the fact that we will not have to spend days cleaning up the garden and yard of the leaves and all those pesky gum balls!  Someone needs to figure out how to make fuel out of those bad boys and they would make a fortune in our neighborhood alone! Although we thought we would be a little further along, with 2 young children I think we did pretty well. John is creating several new beds in the front of the garden and had to re-do the back bed completely as the tree fell right in that path.  We are re-using the river rocks that got displaced when we paved our driveway and that we had around the tree.  Originally we recovered all those rocks from around the yard so we have never had to buy any and now they will be the edge of many of our garden beds. I thought I would do more planting but there was so much general yard work and weeding to do that I only got some onion sets in.  I could have done more, but there may be heavy rains today so I am going to put in the peas, lettuces, kale, asian greens, and swiss chard in tomorrow.  Here is a look at our progress on the garden and a little helper that had to get in to help with the action!

Coming along...see the huge tree trunk?  LOL.

She loves her accessories!

Our Little Helper

Rule #31-When it's too cold outside you can still plant your starter seeds inside!

The basement is also the perfect spot to plant inside with the kiddos.  Mostly the baby just wanted to make a mess but that was ok too.  We got in our tomatoes, celery, peppers and eggplants.  John planted some sunflowers.  I really need to get some parsley planted as well.  I have the worst time with parsley and celery transplants so we shall see how it goes, but one of the parsley plants I bought last year actually overwintered and seems to be doing pretty well.  I may even get a good bush out of it yet!  We enjoyed our first round of borlotti beans from the freezer and I have to say they are amazing.  Will plant a bunch more this year as John will be (yet again) expanding the garden.  I put EVOO, garlic, salt and parsley on them when they were still hot.  P.S.  The radicchio and other assorted greens are doing well!

Planting

Borlotti Beans

Puntarelle Progress

Radicchio

Radicchio and Carrots

Maché

So, it's been a bit cold and windy here and...

the hoop house has been a bit compromised!  The high winds seem to have made it possible for too much cold air at night to get in and the greens have definitely suffered some frost bite!  Hopefully they will recover.  As you will see in the pictures the Puntarelle have continued to grow and I hope they will be ok.  Time will tell.  The Treviso seen to still be doing fine so I will have to dig some more up and force them.  Here are a few shots of the Puntarelle.

The smaller one

The larger one

Rule #30: Gardening surprises can be super exciting!

When I went into the hoop house the other day to pick some radicchio and check on how things were looking under there, I was not shocked to see that many of the chicory had rotting leaves and the Puntarelle chicories were not doing so well.  I was not surprised since when it turned very warm here I just could not even get out to open the door and air out the heat because the girls were both sick with the flu and other secondary infections.  I cleaned out the bad leaves, picked some radicchio, and didn't have time for more that day (that was a few days ago).  Then tonight I knew I needed to get in there really quick and tackle the Puntarelle.  I just cut them down because they were mostly beyond saving and many interior leaves were slimy and brown.  I was able to collect some leaves to cook.  Then I noticed a few that were doing ok and actually opening up more.  I did some investigating and could not believe what I was seeing.  After trying to force some in the garage with little success, I kind of gave up on figuring out how to get the "points"(at least for this year) and was happy to eat the greens.  But it turns out that  two are actually starting the points and these look very different than the ones that started to force in the garage.  These are looking like the beginnings of what I have seen online in the Italian markets!!!!!!  We shall see how it goes, but I am very optimistic. One of the plants needed some cleaning up but the other is totally healthy.  The one problem is that I used two different varieties (Brindisina and Galantina) and I just am not sure which one this is!  During the sowing process I did have an idea which variety was where, but due to lack of time I didn't keep track when I transplanted!  I'll be sure to keep track next growing season!

The healthier of the two

The points inside starting to form

I had to trim this one up a bit

The inside 

Harvest Monday January 28, 2013

So just before it got super cold last week I collected a couple of my Tatsoi plants. I only have a few more small ones now, so I hope they continue to grow.  These were under my hoop house. Also I made a dish similar to what I found on the Diary of a Tomato and Aglio, Olio, e Pepperoncino blogs (in my favorite blogs list) with my Puntarelle style chicory and beans.  I have not been very successful in forcing these and there really isn't much information on line for how to do it.  I actually found a website called You Grow Girl where she grew some with points and I have e-mailed her.  Hopefully she will get back to me.  So, I decided to cut some back (both inside and outside of the hoop house) and see if they come back closer to spring with the "pods" or "points".  I may try again to force some like the Treviso that I have been very successful with this year as well as last.  It seemed to work at first and I got some growth but there seemed to be some rotting at the root bulb happening.  So I made the chicory with beans that were pureed and drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with pepper.  The chicory I did a bit differently.  I let them wilt in their water from cleaning and then sautéd in oil, pepper flakes and garlic.  I would have used my borlotti beans, but wanted to save them.  I didn't have Fava so I substituted with Navy beans which isn't really a similar substitute, but it ended up being really good.  I boiled the beans with one potato and then pureed the potato with the beans as well.  I would really love to try it with the Fava and can't wait to get some :)  It was a touch bitter, but I loved it.  With chicories you just have to like a touch of bitter.

Tatsoi

Chicory and beans (with some Belgian Endive, Malba Crackers, and some Creamy Toscano Cheese soaked in Syrah from Trader Joe's ( the Balsamic one from Whole foods is also yummy and similar)

Close up