Vegetable Gardening

[OakLeaf]

I've read that you shouldn't add parmesan to pesto that you plan to freeze; instead, mix it in after it's thawed.

Honestly, I've frozen it both ways and haven't really noticed a difference.

What I do get is a lot of oxidation and discoloration on the top couple of mm. Doesn't seem to affect the flavor though, if it's not too ugly we'll go ahead and eat it.

Any opinions on either of those?


Also, electric fence is mainly for groundhogs, but it keeps the raccoons out too. That's why I have a ground wire between the two hot wires, in case they try to climb it. They did walk off with most of my tomatoes one year. I tried to get a picture of two raccoons raiding my bird feeder last night, but it was too dark to shoot through the window, and when I opened the door, they took off. A friend of mine is having trouble with crows stealing his sweet corn seedlings this year - says this is the first time in years of gardening that that's happened to him. So far they've left mine alone, touch wood.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

This morning I took a few pix of my little tomato patch- that has now become way more than tomatoes!
Thanks to suggestions here, I rearranged the stone path to take up less space and planted quite a few rows of new seed up and down along every single available space...lots of lettuce (leaf and romaine), 3 kinds of radishes (cherry red, white, and French Breakfast), bok choy, scallions, and more chard. As you can see, things are happening!
We've been eating some lettuce and chard in salads already, and I'm now thinning radish seedlings. Today I saw a 1" toad hopping around under the lettuces.
I am so pleased with how much more I am growing (and hope to harvest) from my little space now! It's been about 20 years since I last grew my own lettuce, in Puerto Rico. Interestingly, the same variety- Black Seeded Simpson!

Here are some "Before and After" pictures:

From May 9th (pre-redesign):


From today June 4th:

(Some of the seeds like the scallions and bok choy have not come up just yet)

Views from the other end:

[tulip]

Looks great, Lisa! If you want to squeeze even more room out of your space, you could remove every other stepping stone and plant low things (lettuce) in between each stone. Or you could remove some of the stones and space the remaining ones farther away from each other and plant lettuce or mesculn mix in between them. Or thyme. Or creeping oregano. Or all of the above.

You could also plant pole beans and/or cucumbers to grow up the fence, although the critters might get the low hanging fruit.

You may not need to bother with that big garden in back after all!

PS: is that rainbow swiss chard that I spy in the last photo? I love that! So colorful and delicious.

[Jolt]

Yesterday my roommate and I spent the afternoon weeding and turning the soil in the part of our garden that doesn't have anything planted yet. I wish we had taken before/after pictures because you should have seen the weeds!! There were quite a few dandelions so I took the greens and cooked them up last night with olive oil, lemon juice and garlic--not bad. Now we need to plant tomatoes, squash, carrots, lettuce, arugula, eggplant and peppers, set up the watering system (sprinklers and soaker hoses) and put the fence up around the garden to keep out the critters. I'm enjoying reading about everyone else's gardens!

[smilingcat]

Lisa, your garden looks beautiful. And getting a lot more use out of it too. Raddishes all around the stepping stone?

Lettuce looks yummy.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Looks great, Lisa! If you want to squeeze even more room out of your space, you could remove every other stepping stone and plant low things (lettuce) in between each stone. Or you could remove some of the stones and space the remaining ones farther away from each other and plant lettuce or mesculn mix in between them.

Can't do it I'm afraid. I'm already having a hard time balancing myself without tipping over on the path while I work over the plants as it is. I can't space the stones further apart without losing my footing or my balance. The photos make the garden look a bit larger than it really is, I think. I feel like a bull in a china shop when I'm in there!

Hey, wait a minute!... If I hoist myself up on a pulley system hovering over the garden like Peter Pan (or "Bruno"!) then I can get rid of the stone path completely by tending to the plants while suspended over them in the air. I could plant more lettuce! ;D

You could also plant pole beans and/or cucumbers to grow up the fence, although the critters might get the low hanging fruit.

I'm afraid that would cut half of the day's sunlight out for all the plants inside, considering how they are so close to the shed and the sun mostly comes in from that fence side.

You may not need to bother with that big garden in back after all!

Awww...but I want to grow more food! Waaaaaaah, waaaaah!!!!!

PS: is that rainbow swiss chard that I spy in the last photo? I love that! So colorful and delicious.

Yes sir-eee- you can see it along the right fence in the first two photos, closest to the camera. I love swiss chard, both raw and cooked. There are 'normal' white stemmed, yellow, and red stemmed.

[jobob]

Wow. Nice.

You have me dreaming about heirloom tomatoes now.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Wow. Nice.

You have me dreaming about heirloom tomatoes now.

Thanks JoBob and Smilingcat!

Actually, last year all I was able to do was to dream about my heirloom tomatoes, since they got a late start and then winter frosts came early, killing all my tomato plants off while the tomatoes were still little hard green golf balls. It's always an adventure in weather every year.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Progress trudges along....

I have the estimates on several of the cheaper-end styles of permanent sturdy professionally installed garden fence. All obscenely expensive, but the fence will last longer than me probably, and be pretty maintenance free and varmint-proof. It'll be 7 feet tall- enough for the rare deer we get passing through here.
Now I have to decide on the fence style among the 5 or 6 choices in my budget range. Then it's wait for the excavator to be able to fit me in his schedule to come with the topsoil and digging.

We now have a red fox living right in our backyard under our shed. He is (so far) too smart to go in the big Havaheart trap set with cat food for the past 3 nights. He really can't stay here since we are pretty much right in the village and he needs to be more in the countryside. There was a litter of foxes and their mother wandering the neighborhood and this one picked our shed to burrow under.

Meanwhile, my little mini-veggie garden is literally exploding in growth now. Lots of baby green tomatoes the size of large marbles, everything looking so lush! I've been staking and pruning the tomatoes up off the baby lettuces, and thinning the many radishes to 1 1/2" apart. I've learned to spread the seed a bit further apart as I plant it. I have baby romaine and bok choy coming up nicely, and my scallions are happy 2" tall green shoots now in a long row. I'm judiciously clipping back some of the stringbean/waxbean leaves too, to continue letting the radishes get sun.

But harvest-wise, I've got plenty of Swiss chard and TONS of leaf lettuce- we are now having fresh green salads almost every day. In fact, I am going to pick some on Monday to give to a lady I know who would love some for her family with kids. We will not be able to keep up with eating it quite fast enough. But then, I just love giving away fresh garden stuff. Several years ago I had so many wonderful tomatoes that we would bring bags of them into town when we went for breakfast, and pick unsuspecting strangers to bestow them on- after an initial moment wondering if there was a 'catch' (which was always funny), people were delighted.

I haven't grown lettuce in about 20 years, and it's a great feeling to be doing it again and having success.