Garden Check Up

Checking in on the progress of our veggie and fruit production. Yes, I have to include fruit because the strawberries are absolutely going bananas! In our patch that we planted Spring 2008, this year we are taking out 12-15 quarts of berries every other day. AND they are nice sized berries, and may I add, delicious. The neighbors and our kids love them too. Yes, we are sharing rather than making jam or freezing. Check out my strawberry pie recipe in an earlier blog if you are in the midst of berry season.

The following is my husband's garden report in a nutshell:
Have bibb and romaine lettuce galore, but with the heat it is starting to bolt.

The first sweet corn I had planned on having by 4th of July tassled out at 2 feet, so it will not have ears worth a darn. It has been too cold this spring and early summer.

I planted tomato seed the end of April and those plants are just as big as the plants I bought in May. Go figure.

I have 36 pepper plants. They are doing real well in the heat-- yellow, red, purple, brown, green.

We have eaten all the broccoli up. Now waiting on side shoots to grow out. Cabbage is just heading up. Cauliflower is still a ways off.

Beans aren't growing worth a darn, but the onions are growing great.

Watermelon and cantaloupe are just limping along.

We have little zucchini forming on the plants.

Pumpkins are going great. We have a new one this year called Knucklehead. It has warts all over it. We haven't told the grandkids yet, so that will be a surprise. Maybe they can win the Ugliest Pumpkin award at the Harvest Festival this year.

That's the run down on the garden at this point. Summer is half over. Hope your gardens are growing well. Leave a comment and let me know how you are doing. Thanks.

Broccoli Heaven

Broccoli plants in our garden taken a couple of weeks ago. The heads are now mature and ready to eat.

We have had steamed broccoli, boiled broccoli, with cheese sauce and without cheese (I prefer cheese of course). Now I am into making broccoli salad.

Broccoli is a cold crop which means we can start this plant early in the spring in Michigan. It can survive 20 degree temps. Optimum temps are between 50-70 degrees. Once the summer heat starts, the plants will bolt to seed. It takes about 6 weeks from seed to transplant, so plant seeds now to have a delicious fresh crop in the fall. Or if you want to buy plants, put them in the ground in late summer.

We keep an eye out for the little green worms that sometimes attack broccoli. They are so hard to see since they are the exact color of the leaves. I always soak the head in salt water for a few hours since that will get the critters off the florets. I have heard, but not tried, sprinkling cayenne pepper on the leaves before the head forms will deter aphids and caterpillars. This is a tip to use if you are into organic gardening.

Delicious Greens

I am beginning to pick up a distinctive nose twitching as I look in the mirror this week. I attribute it to all the lettuce we are eating now. We have had great success with lettuce crops. Not only do the salads taste good and fresh, they are so pretty too! Ted planted several kinds of lettuce with colors other than green.

He has the usual Bibb lettuce, a spotted one called Freckles, and a very deep red one called Deer Tongue. When I mix in the dark green leaves of spinach, radishes, and fresh onions, I feel like an artist designing a painting. (I never thought I would arrange lettuce to look as pretty as a bouquet of flowers.)

In the photo there are carrots and cheese, but neither came from our garden............

Swiss chard is ready now too, so today I will experiment with this in a salad. We have never grown it, so it will be a new experience. Do you grow it? If so, how do you prepare it? Fresh, boiled,???

Oh dear, there goes that twitching nose again...

Herbs for Flavor, Herbs for Fragrance

Herbs are not veggies, so they may not actually be a topic for a vegetable gardening blog. But after extensive lolling this over in my mind, (about three seconds), I concluded that they ARE edible and should be included in this blog.

That is not to say, however, that herbs have to be grown in the veggie garden. Fragrant herbs are welcome and easily accessible in a pot growing outside the kitchen door. Perhaps you have a meditation area or walkway that would allow interspersing the plants between your shrubs, trees, rock garden.

The most important tip to pass along is definitely planting herbs in a convenient location for you to go and snip the leaves and actually use them in your cooking. After all, the purpose of the herb garden is to have fresh herbs and not those dried up leaves in a can. Make them easily available to assure that you will use them while they are fresh.

There are so many herbs to choose from and so many ways to use them, that I cannot include all of them here. Google "growing herbs" for a ton of information from the Internet. I have included a few that you may like to check out.

Creeping Rosemary--This is a perfect plant for a ground cover and is beautiful in a rock garden. Pale blue flowers from early to mid summer. Easy to grow in sunny locations and hardy to five degrees Fahrenheit. Good for flavoring meats and dressings.

Oregano-for the fragrance. Beautiful plant whose leaves add so much flavor to Mexican and Italian dishes.

Sage--Lots of varieties of sage. Sage Pineapple has a delightful pineapple scent and is a show-stopper with its stunning red tubular flowers which attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Add a few of the red flowers which are edible to your next green salad or fresh fruit salads for an eye-popping dish your guests will love.

Strawberries Under Attack

The strawberries are forming here in Michigan. I can't wait to pick these tasty ruby jewels packed with flavor. Take some precautions to protect your crop because there are others interested in getting a bite of the berry too. Basically the birds love feasting on the berries just when they are at their prime.

We cover our strawberry plants with a netting that allows the sunshine and rain in, but keeps those pesky birds out. Last year the netting worked very well, so I am recommending it to you. The netting is available at garden centers during strawberry growing season. Pick some up today so you won't be disappointed when you go to pick a bowlful of berries for your favorite strawberry dessert or cereal topping.

The Taste of Spring

Woo Hoo! It's beginning to look like a garden now. In Michigan most folks wait till after Memorial Day to the first week of June to plant due to crazy frosts. Tonight, June 2, a frost is predicted in our area. Yep, DH just planted the tomatoes and peppers.......Wouldn't ya' know?

We have had delish salads from our lettuce decorated with home grown radishes. I am anxious to try a new leaf lettuce that is red and spotted, Freckles. There are so many colorful lettuces available. I know, I know. The deeper the green, the better for you. But, um, how about red??

The broccoli has little tiny heads on it now. Onions are lookin' great. And oh, those strawberries are full of blooms. DH started the corn in the greenhouse and it is standing tall right now.

Just a reminder that broccoli and lettuce are crops that can be planted later this summer and harvested in the fall. However, in our area the seed cannot be found when it is time to plant again, so be sure to buy enough seed for fall plantings now. These cold crops grow better in cool weather and the flavor is milder. It seems as the weather heats up, the flavor turns bitter. Enjoy that fresh spring taste while you can!

Tomato Cages

Caging tomatoes makes it sound like tomatoes are wild and ferocious beasts. But as I said in the previous post, you really can grow tomatoes. It isn't rocket science or brain surgery. My husband prefers "caging" tomatoes in the garden, but you don't need to do that. He likes to keep them up off the ground to produce a ripe, healthy fruit.

Check to see if the variety you are growing is a bush (determinate) or a free growing, vining tomato (indeterminate). The bush plant is a compact plant, but the vining tomato plant needs to be confined as it can spread out into the garden and grows tall needing substantial support.

You can purchase cages at a nursery/greenhouse center, but hubby likes to make his own because they are very sturdy and can hold a large plant. He uses 4 x 6 concrete re-enforcement wire and encircles the plant with it. He stakes the wire to help hold it securely so that when the winds hit, it won't blow over. Be sure that the openings in the wire are large enough so that you can get your hand in to the plant to harvest tomatoes and big enough to withdraw your hand holding onto that huge, ripe, juicy tomato....mmmm, yummy.

I can just envision this treat in my salad. And, don't you know, there is no taste comparison to a ripened-on-the-vine tomato to a hot house tomato. The vine tomato wins every time. I guess that is what keeps gardeners going knowing what tasty rewards we get at harvest time.

Enjoy!

Terrific Tomatoes

Terrific, tantalizing, tasty tomatoes describe this juicy fresh fruit. But when thinking of planting tomatoes in the garden, people may describe them as terrifying, troubling, trying. Puh---leeze...Growing terrific tomatoes is not rocket science.

A tomato plant will thrive in a pot, in a small plot, or a field if it has lots of sunshine, water, and of course another necessity for living is well-drained soil. (People overlook the importance of a good growing medium, so I will always lecture on it whenever I get the chance...Don't dig up dirt from your yard and throw it in a pot to start or grow your tomatoes. Starting soil and garden soil in a bag is, excuse me, dirt cheap.)

Deciding on which tomato to grow is probably the most difficult step in the process. Do you want tons of little tomatoes for salads? Then choose the cherry or grape tomato. If you can't wait for the first tomato or you want to be the first on your block with a tomato, then plant Early Girl so that in about 45 days from transplanting to the garden, you will have one on your plate for lunch. (Do you like salt or sugar or nothing on your slices?)

Many of the old stand-bys like Rutgers, Beefsteak, Big Boy are the tastes you have grown up with. But there are so many more tomatoes available for you to experience. The newer tomatoes are resistant to disease, produce more fruit, and may be tastier. Try Tastee Lee and Fabulous.

I would also encourage you to shop at a garden center that actually labels the tomato plant with the variety name instead of a generic tag that says "Tomato." After the growing season make a note about each variety so you will know what you liked and didn't like by name. When you shop next year, select the varieties that performed well or tasted the best, etc. You can't do that if you only know that it was "Tomato."

Pay attention to the length of time it takes to produce a ripe tomato from your plants... Early Girl can be ready in July in our area, but some plants won't produce an edible fruit until September. Read the information on the tags to help you have a successful and satisfying experience in gardening.

So far my husband is planting Early Girl, Way Ahead, Super Boy and Husky Red. The large tomato in the photo is Husky Red. He raised it from a cell pack to this large 8" pot in a month in the greenhouse. The price for this size plant at one of the big box stores this weekend was $10.00!!!

If the acid in tomatoes bothers you, try planting yellow tomatoes.

Planning this spring for a harvest of terrific tomatoes this year is essential. Enjoy!!