Tag Archives: gardens

Cold Frames, Tomatoes, Peppers

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IMG 0296 225x300 Cold Frames, Tomatoes, Peppers

It’s all about season extension up here in Montana, and these cold frames are one of my primary means of making the most of what I’ve got. I build them a little more than five years ago (Nina was pregnant with the twins, who are five now) and they work really well for a couple of reasons.

One is that they’re just outside the back door. This early in the season, I put flats out during the day, but bring them in at night. It’s just too cold, and I don’t want to risk losing the seedlings and having to start over. As it gets warmer, I’ll leave things out overnight, and I’ve been known to light a Virgin of Guadalupe candle out there to keep the temps above freezing. The other key to these cold frames is the double-wall plastic. I can’t remember where I bought it, just google greenhouse plastic, but because it breaks up the UV rays, it keeps the seedlings from burning up.

I need to get to work and start some other seedlings — flowers, broccoli, tomatillos, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe this week. Outside, I have tons of Chinese cabbages and veggies under one hoop house, and broccoli rabe, arugula, spinach, and komatsuna, my new favorite vegetable, under the other. Those are all doing stupendously and I’ve been joyfully eating my own greens for two weeks now. In the exposed garden I’ve planted peas, and onions — I need to get some turnips and beets and chard and carrots in, but the weather was wonky this weekend. Intermittently cold.

It’s funny, the first couple of years I was really driven by my veggie garden, and now I”m a lot more relaxed. I like it. I LOVE eating my own vegetables (I’m convinced part of the reason I was so sick this winter was that I wasn’t eating my own veggies). But I’m a lot less driven? uptight? insane? about the whole thing these days. Things will get planted. Things will get eaten. Another year, another revolution around the sun.

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Hoop House!

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IMG 0294 300x225 Hoop House!

This is what I found when I opened the hoop house to water this morning — real greens! Greens I can eat! I am beyond thrilled with how well these have worked out this year. The binder clips have kept the plastic from blowing off, even in the worst winds Livingston has to offer (winds that cause them to close the interstate and run all the semi-trailers through town). The plastic has kept it warm in there through a couple of weeks of freezing nights. And I’m sure the fact that we’ve had three or four 70-degree days hasn’t hurt.

But after a couple of months of fighting off low-grade colds and then strep, I’m beyond thrilled to be eating my own greens again. I can’t think of anything that will restore your health faster than your own dark green veggies, some sunshine, backyard eggs, and nice long walks through town in the early evening with the dog.

I can’t wait to see how the hoop houses work for the peppers. They don’t like cool nights, which is what we almost always have. I wish they were prettier, but I’ll settle for effective.

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Spring Greens

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IMG 0293 300x225 Spring Greens

I came back from my week in Seattle and found that the hoop houses have been a huge success. The photo above is my first batch of spring greens — arugula, broccoli rabe, komatsuna, and a few dandelions from the yard. I was just thrilled. There were enough thinnings that I’ve been eating my own greens, fresh from the yard, for the first time since last summer.

I have to say, I think part of the reason I came down with strep is that after growing my own veggies, the ones in the store, especially in the winter in Montana, look so sad and tired that I just can’t get excited about cooking or eating them. My greens, on the other hand, are vibrant and fabulous and bright green and were growing and alive just yesterday. This morning, I made my favorite breakfast, greens and eggs rolled up in a tortilla, and it just felt like everything is going to be okay again. I’ve got greens coming up. Spring is back.

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It’s Spring and I Can’t Come Inside…

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IMG 0252 225x300 Its Spring and I Cant Come Inside...

Spring has sprung here in Montana. My computer is telling me it’s 57 degrees outside, and the sun is shining, and it’s making it very difficult to come indoors. Especially since I’m going to be returning to the Big Corporation part time, probably next week. So, I’m taking advantage of the weather, and the sunshine, and my last few days where I don’t have to be tethered to the computer indoors for specified hours.

Which means blogging might be a little slow this week.

IMG 0259 300x225 Its Spring and I Cant Come Inside...

On the other hand, I’ve been gardening up a storm. I added a second hoop house this weekend. This second hoop house looked much better than the first one. I think I mistakenly bought more expensive, bendier PVC than I needed the first time around. This second one I built using the cheapest 1/2 inch PVC that the hardware store had — 1.97 for a 10 foot section. It’s great. Very sturdy. So I went back and bought replacement PVC and rebuilt the first hoop house (I’m going to use the bendy PVC in the narrow beds along the back of the garden — my plan is to cut the 10 foot lengths in half, since those beds are only two feet wide).

IMG 0257 225x300 Its Spring and I Cant Come Inside...
There are even sprouts coming up in my hoop house. You have to look really hard to see them. God, I love arugula. It’ll grow anywhere. That photo was taken Saturday. By this morning the Komatsuna was also sprouted. The spinach and endives are a little behind, there were only one or two sprouts in those rows, and the mache, well, either there are a few mache seedlings, or those are weeds. I used fairly raw chicken straw manure compost, so I have a hunch it’s going to be a weedy year.

I’m waiting for my Asian vegetable seeds to arrive from Evergreen Seeds for the second hoop house. Right now it’s just heating up the soil in there. A couple of days of that aren’t going to hurt anything. I’m also about to go down in the basement and start the peppers and tomatoes.

Spring. It’s so beautiful. Like being let out of jail.

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Hybrids vs. Open-Pollinated Seeds, Read the Labels

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sunflower field 300x201 Hybrids vs. Open Pollinated Seeds, Read the Labels

It’s that time of year, when we’re all buying seeds, and I just want to put a plug in for reading the labels. Seed saving is something I only came to a few years into keeping a garden, and I pretty much just save tomato seeds at this point, but with Monsanto being investigated for monopolizing seed stocks, it seems that seed saving is one place that backyard gardeners can really have an impact.

But the thing is, you can’t save seeds from hybrid varieties. So when you’re perusing the seed racks at your local garden stores, if it’s something relatively easy to save yourself, like tomato or squash or herbs, you’d do well to check the package. Seed Savers Exchange is a great source of heirloom varieties that individual gardeners have saved themselves, and they’ve got some good info on how to save your own seeds as well. Personally, I find that half the fun of having a backyard garden is growing things I can’t buy in the store. For the last few years it’s been interesting Italian greens and veggies from Seeds of Italy, and this year I’m experimenting with Asian greens I got from Evergreen Seeds. I mean, why grow the same old commercial hybrids that you can buy at the grocery store, when you can grow red bunching onionsevergreenseeds 2096 1432436 135x150 Hybrids vs. Open Pollinated Seeds, Read the Labels, or Rapa da Foglia senza Testabrocrabsensatesta 98x150 Hybrids vs. Open Pollinated Seeds, Read the Labels(one of my very favorite discoveries).?

Look, even Stephen Colbert is on to the awesome power of the non-hybrid seed stocks:

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Survival Seed Bank
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations
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Belgian Town Gives Chickens To Residents

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BelgianChicken 150x112 Belgian Town Gives Chickens To Residents
According to the BBC, the town of Mouscron, in Belgium, has 50 pairs of chickens it plans to give to residents as a way to decrease the waste stream.

I have to say, my chickens have both significantly lowered my household and garden waste, and here in the arid west, they’ve exponentially sped up the composting process. Composting is a real problem here, because it’s so dry. Because there was an 8×10 concrete pad in the back part of the yard, that’s where I built the chicken coop. And because the compost heaps were already in that part of the yard (my very fancy setup built from recycled pallets) we decided it would probably be easier just to enclose the compost in with the chickens. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but it worked out beautifully. The chickens scratch around in the compost piles all day, digging holes, excavating for bugs, and aerating the compost in the process. And cleaning out the coop and yard is really easy — I rake out the shavings from inside the coop, then hurl the shavings and straw (that’s what I use to cover the concrete) into the compost heaps. Then the chickens pull it all down, and I toss it back up. I’m getting compost in months that used to take years. Plus, I think it gives the chickens something to do all day.

I’ve been bartering eggs for all sorts of things, and I’ve gotten big compliments on how delicious my eggs are. If I know the person well I tell them the secret is compost. Compost the chickens, compost the garden, it’s all good.

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The School Garden flap …

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While in some ways I hate to give Caitlin Flanagan any more web traffic for her flameball of an article about school gardens, the response has been very heartening. Here’s a link roundup:

As someone who comes from a long line of experiential educators, as well as someone who watched a number of very very smart family members struggle with dyslexia (and thrive when given something concrete to do), I think anything that gets kids connecting what they’re learning in the classroom to applications in the real world is a great thing …

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Food Poisoning!

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Ugh. So Saturday afternoon I thawed out some of last year’s antelope, marinated it, and made some skewers with a few onions out of the garden (for Chuck) and with onions and tomatoes and zucchini for me. Three in the morning and my sweetheart is not well. I’m a little rumbly in the tummy, but he is Not A Well Man. It was very very sad. And a long night.

Morning strikes and he is still Sick Like Dog. He sits in the living room watching football and ignoring a cup of black tea while I go out back and feverishly enclose the vegetable garden in bird netting. Sometime during the Long Night, I decided that it must have been the onions. The chickens have been in that bed a lot, and because I was afraid of overcooking the very lean antelope, the onions weren’t as cooked as I’d have liked. They were crunchy. All night I had visions of germy chicken feet, and contaminated onions and so, despite Chuck’s conviction that it was the antelope, I went out and banished the chickens from the garden.

In the spring, when the ground is soft, I’ll have to continue the copper-pipe trellis I have around the perimeter of the other beds, but for now I have a very loving-hands-at-home bamboo fence covered  in bird netting. And a “gate” made from a couple of old pieces of green epoxy-coated wire fence. It’s not pretty, but it works. Two days and no chickens in the garden. And I kind of like the enclosure — it’s sweet in there. Like the Secret Garden. I did find a sparrow caught in the bird netting this afternoon, but I got him out and tucked away the stray piece in which he’d caught himself.

And by this morning, the tide of unpleasantness seems to have subsided. But I feel terrible. Here I am, so-called food blogger, and I poisoned my beloved! My grandmother gave me food poisoning so many times as a kid that I think I’ve got pretty good antibodies, but really, I’ve never actually given anyone food poisoning before. I feel terrible. I don’t know if it was those germy chickens, but it can’t hurt to fence them out of the food crops. Sheesh. Tonight I think it’s going to be something plain, like pork chops and rice (and ripe tomato salad for me, the one who eats vegetables).

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First Tomatoes of the Season

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IMG 0159 300x225 First Tomatoes of the Season

Jaunne Flammé, Grushovka, Galina, Prairie Fire

Here are the first tomatoes of the season.

Yes, I realize it’s the end of August. It’s been a long cool summer here in Montana, and the tomatoes have only just now started getting ripe. Just in time to be swathed in plastic sheeting.

The romas are looking good — I planted two kinds, Borghese and Milano Plum, both from Seeds of Italy. They’re just starting to pink up, but I’m beginning to see homemade sauce and salsa in my future.

The Siberians are coming in nicely. I couldn’t remember the difference when I was planting between Perestroika and Grushovka, and from what I can tell, there isn’t much. Theyr’e both nice medium-sized early tomatoes, with a good sweet-acid balance. After three or four days in the bowl though, the ones I ate for lunch today were a little bit mealy.

Jaunne Flammé is probably my favorite tomato I grow. You can only just one in this pic — it’s the orange tomato hiding beneath the basil. They’re about the size of a large egg, grow in clusters, and taste wonderful.

The only real problem I’ve had with the tomatoes this year, aside from the weather, is the chickens. I’ve draped that bed in bird netting, but a couple of them have managed to sneak in underneath it somehow — and my first few ripe tomatoes had been cannibalized from the inside. Alas.

So, it was a late start, but looks like tomato season is here … and I’m eating ginormous bowls of tomato and cucumber salad for lunch these days …

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