May 1 crops: green and red and delicious

It's a rainy May 1, and I'm really happy about how much food I am already harvesting. My goal used to be my first meal from the garden by May 1. Now it's April 1, thanks to the 3 coldframes I set up this spring.

I've got greens galore: swiss chard, spinach, arugula, radishes and red and green lettuces. My dinners for the past week have featured my own raw or cooked greens.  Today  for lunch I had a stir fry of my own  'Icicle' radishes (both tops and bottoms) with store-bought shitakes, carrots, onion and ginger.  Here are the radishes I used:

The rhubarb plants are giants already, and I made another batch of stewed rhubarb to eat over yogurt. I love the way the smell of the rhubarb rises through the house and lingers upstairs for hours. I checked the net to see if I can freeze the jars of cooked rhubarb, and apparently I can, so I will!

There have been failures-- even under a net cover my kale and bokchoy were eaten by bugs.  I just can't grow any brassicas without losing way to much to insects, so I may give up, or at least try them in the fall when the insect load will decrease.

But otherwise I'm happy. Here are some pics of the greens, my pea patch,  and the strawberries netted against birds:

Inside the house I have finished repotting all the tomatoes and peppers, and my summer crops are growing apace under my crazy (but effective) lighting. So much potential and hope in one room.

Happy May Day!

Grey and blue.... weather and potatoes. And some asparagus too.

Last week I finally got my much dreamed of blue potatoes. They came in a shipment from Pinetree along with  some big healthy looking asparagus and strawberries. Here's a pic of the asparagus crowns in the box.

I took the plastic off the crowns and set them in water up to the top of the roots, and put them into a shady spot to hydrate for a couple of hours.

Unfortunately, the potatoes were half rotted. I got out my Swiss army knife and cut off most of the rot,  and lost about half the 'eyes' -- the growing sprouts.

Then I put the cut potatoes in the garage to dry for a day before planting.
Later I planted the asparagus crowns in several beds I had prepped. I added aged horse manure, compost, 10-10-10 fertilizer, and dug them deeply, removing any tree roots and rocks I encountered (there were a lot, this is New England).

 The crowns went in about a foot apart, with the tops just exposed. As they grow I'm supposed to hill up soil around the stems.  I should not pick any asparagus for a couple of years to let the crowns build up strength, but if they get well established I'll be eating  my own asparagus every spring for the next twenty years.
The next morning I planted the potatoes. Sol came over while I was digging and  picked one up experimentally, then dropped it back onto the bin lid I was using to dry them.  Definitely not to his taste, by the grimace on his face.

 Planting the potatoes was much like planting the asparagus, except that I don't have to fence the potato bed; just like Sol, the woodchucks and rabbits have no taste for potato.

I called Pinetree and they are sending me replacement potatoes, but not blue ones; they were out of stock.  It takes about three weeks for potatoes to sprout, and we've had the first good rain storm of the season  in the week since I planted them-- three inches of rain on April 22.
Whether the current cool grey weather will rot the blue potatoes or speed their growth, only about another two weeks will tell. All my earlier potatoes  planted on April 4 ( Rose Finn, Russet, Katahdin whites, Yukon Gold) are all sprouting as of today, so even if the blues don't survive, I'll have plenty of  home grown potatoes  in late summer.

Aha! Fiddlehead ferns for lunch

The latest issue of 'Mother Earth News' has an article about perennial vegetables, and as I perused it last week I wondered if they'd somehow been reading my mind.  I mused all winter about what mix of perennial crops to plant over the next few years, with the goal being less work and more food down the road.
The piece featured some crops I knew and some I didn't-- I will definitely follow up on growing ramps, groudnuts, chervil and 'good King Henry' (apparently a tasty green). But there is  at least one easy to grow perennial crop they overlooked -- fiddlehead ferns.
The joke is that I forgot about them too. When I was a fine dining line cook many years ago we cooked with fiddleheads every spring. But until I looked around my garden last week and realized that my annual transplanting of ostrich ferns to yet another shady corner of my garden was now producing a bumper crop of fiddleheads, I had never harvested and eaten my own ferns.
Like all leafy crops, fiddleheads are best harvested in the morning when they are plump with moisture.  I picked only the still tightly curled leaves, not those that were already elongating. Most plants had a mix of both:

Though some, perhaps in sunnier spots, were well past the edible stage:

The fiddleheads must be rinsed thoroughly to remove the brown chaff of last year's growth. Here's yesterday's pickings:

I sauteed the fiddle heads with onion, and deglazed with sherry, then combined them with some cooked orzo, butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Delicious.

And I've already transplanted ferns this spring to a new bed by my second compost bin. I love perennial vegetables!

Early Crops

It's April 12th and I'm already eating something from the garden every day. The chives are so vigorous I am throwing them into practically everything I eat (ok, not dessert) so that they won't take over.  And the arugula, spinach, parsley, and radish sprout salad I had yesterday was vibrant and full of green spiciness.

The  trio of rhubarb plants I got from my neighbor last year are already leafing out:

I would not normally harvest rhubarb this early, but it is the perfect time to transplant it, and when I dug up a clump for a friend some stems fell off.  I brought them in and made a small batch of my grandmother's strawberry rhubarb compote (see last spring's blog entry for the recipe).  I'm looking forward to rhubarb compote and yogurt for breakfast!

It has been a dry spring and I bought some soaker hoses yesterday. Here they are in the raspberry patch:

Today we did get some rain, but not enough.  We need a nice long spring storm!

Finally, here are some flowers from the garden.  The daffodils are a mix of ones I planted and those that came with the garden when I moved in 19 years ago. I've never planted tulips because I know rabbits find them tasty, but a few pop up every year in random spots around the garden. They are often destroyed by  rain, so I guess there's a good side to this dry spell.

Back to spring

For a few days it seemed like the weather here was going from winter to summer and bypassing spring entirely. I enjoyed the sun and warmth, but worried about the garden.  The hot, sunny weather (record-breaking 80 degrees a couple of days after the solstice) dried up the spring mud in the wetlands behind my house prematurely, and my garden was drying up fast too.
The spring rains fill the aquifer beneath my property, and it is the source of the well water that sustains us through the summer. Without the rains, and with such hot temps, what would be the consequences?  I thought of Australia, and Texas, and terrible, endless droughts.  Then I laughed at myself.  The weather may be weird, but it's not that bad yet.
And yesterday it was 50 degrees and  rainy, and I was happy.  The temps have moderated for a week, with even a light frost a couple of nights.  My spring crops like this weather, and so do I, in March and April.
Here's spinach getting it's first true leaves:

Sol and I walked in the wetlands this evening, and found deer tracks in the fresh mud:

They must have passed through at dusk, just before we walked. The smell of deer dries Sol crazy, like catnip to a cat.

Amaryllis success!

Last spring I posted about the 'Apple Blossom' Amaryllis that was blooming in my upstairs seedling room.  I challenged myself to keep it alive over the summer, and get it to rebloom this winter, rather than discarding it when the flowers faded.  This challenge was part of my reinvention as a more sustainable gardener.
Well, as the post title says, I succeeded. But there were surprises along the way.  The leaves grew large once the flowers ended, and thrived in the slightly shaded alcove by my front door.  In early summer they died back, and I put the pot in the garage and let it dry our during dormancy.  In September it began to grow again, and  I moved it out into the sun and waited for the flower bud to show.
But all I got was leaves.  Frost was imminent, so I brought the pot inside and put it in a corner.  The leaves died back again, and again I let it dry out.  I figured the bulb was regaining strength, and there might be flowers next year.
In late February I noticed a budded shoot emerging from the bulb.  I quickly watered it and moved it into a sunny spot.
The flowers are now open, and they are just as big as last year! And there is a side bud forming-- in a couple of years it could produce another flower stalk.  Just another reminder that even in our fast-paced, results now world,  patience is  still rewarded.

Summer, er I mean Spring Frenzy

Yes it is officially Spring. Last year we had snow March 21, tomorrow is expected to be in the 70's!
I'm using the great weather to do a frenzy of work in the garden  -- I'm "seizing the day and throttling it" as Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) used to say, with accompanying picture of him covered in dirt and blood.
Here's some pics of what I've done-- I'm too tired to write much.
I spray painted my garden tower blue.   I will grow only beans on it this year-- the morning glories took over last year, ans I vowed not to make the mistake of planting them with beans again.

I also brought home truckloads of mulch and compost. A tarp under the load is my secret for easy cleanup.  The mulch went mostly on paths in the garden, the compost topped off the new asparagus bed, which is now ready for the mail order asparagus crowns.... due here any day. 

And I fenced off  my older 16 ft bed, which made Sol sad, because he liked to lie on it. Then I put in a pop up fabric covered tunnel and planted kale, bok choy and purple sprouting broccoli under it. Take that, you cabbage moths.

I also manured beds, cut back perennials, weeded, and even cut some grass ( I can't believe I had to cut grass in March).  Now it's time to relax, so this post is done.