Sunday Garden

Summer has swept us away, and the garden. Things are growing--nearly out of control. It's a delicate balance, one minute everything looks great, the next sunflowers are falling over under the weight of their own blooms and the paths are unpassable thanks to giant tomatillo plants and unruly butternut squash vines...

But, we picked our first ever Savoy Cabbage today, canned some and will make this recipe which I caught Lidia making on today's show. Kismet, as yesterday we had NO idea what we would make with it...

Here are the photo updates:

echinacea (cone flower) growing on the side of the house

hops--very small! Drew just started it, may take a year or 2.

there are LOADS of butternut squash. Anyone know when you pick?

savoy cabbage plant

savoy cabbage chopped

please share a link to your latest garden post!

Back in the Garden

While I haven't had much time to post, we've been enjoying a lot of time with friends and simply, together as a family. I anticipated a certain amount of down-time, but I'll confess I haven't felt much like sitting around. Perhaps it's the time of year, but surprisingly quickly I feel I'm coming out of the baby fog. Not to say things are all making sense to me...

But, much of our time as a family is spent in the garden. Everyone enjoys it, particularly if we can make it out there in the morning. The heat so far this summer has been outrageous!

 we planted some sunflowers, but others popped up and are useful for bean-climbing.

But, hopefully I'll be back to more regular posts soon. Speaking of which, here is a delayed peek into our garden. It's been a while and things are a little jungle-esque now. I'm also hoping that some of you will share your gardening links below!

bee balm 

blackberries 

a random head of broccoli or 2 are still popping up. 

to control the bermuda grass, which isn't really possible, we put down weed cloth & Drew topped it with mulch today--it was STILL thriving under the cloth. the devil weed... 

the lemon trees have lemons! never before... 

this is our first harvest of onions, should be more later. Any suggestions on keeping them? We plan to braid, but we've never done onions before... 

tomatillos are also new for us--but this recipe (using chicken thighs) made us want to try. 

and the most exciting summer crop? tomatoes are almost ready. We can't wait...

Garden Growing and Making Unleavened Bread

everything is getting greener... 

daikon, new tomato seedlings, repotted plants, lettuces...

happenings in our garden? well, we've planted some of our awesome--and I can say that knowing how we've struggled to figure it out--tomato seedlings in actual beds and repotted a bunch more. Thinking about selling the extras, if we find people interested in heirloom, organically grown goodness...

LEARNED:  it took us a few days to identify one of the plants we sowed a month ago. Turns out it's Daikon Radish. Drew looked for more info about it, and while there are loads of recipes, it's also a great plant for cover cropping. Its roots delve down, even through really tough soils like clay breaking it up, then you can let them rot & your beds are ready for the next growing season. (this process can be stinky, apparently, keep that in mind!)

 
I stole the below pictured lettuce from the garden and this guy didn't seem to thrilled about it...

Drew and the girls whipped up some 'tortillas' which we think are probably more authentic to what the Israelites would have eaten during this season...

It was SO yum. 

and the bread combined with the lettuce combined with some hummus and some homemade falafel topped with a smidge of ketchup--well, it was a very nice dinner.

How are things growing in your garden? Please share! Link below.

A Virtual Greenhouse Tour

Don't forget the How Does Your Garden Grow giveaway--ends Tuesday! Nasturtiums, Sunflowers and other organic wildflowers to attract the bees to your garden...

But for today, a first! We spontaneously decided to film a little tour of the greenhouse, so take a second to watch, if you're interested. Drew is quite the host ;)

We've also got some real activity in the garden beds. The Sugar Snap Peas are starting to climb.

The lettuces, carrots, radishes, broccoli, etc. are all starting to really turn into recognizeable plants! Can't wait to harvest a few things. We did pluck the first asparagus shoot the other night when we were enjoying time outside. We all enjoyed a piece of it, it's SO much different when you eat it straight from the garden, now if we only had enough to add it to a meal!

Don't forget to link up if you have a garden post--we'd love to see it!

Tomatoes: a gardener's pride.

This post was written by Drew, per my request for him to document the garden happenings.

Add your recent garden update link, please.

This is the first year so far that we have ever been able to have seedlings grow well. Particularly Tomato seedlings, and like all gardener's, they are really the pride and joy of the summer crop, so to pull of starting from seeds is a big deal.

 

These are the changes that made the difference:

1. We took last year's grow light and, after much research, moved it down; way down to about 2" from the top of the pots. We also kept the seeds covered with plastic until the seedlings sprouted up, when it was possible. The light is on a timer that runs from 4am to 8:30pm which, when they were started, was way more light than what we had in a day. Thanks to longer days, we are starting to catch up to that now.
2. We didn't use the starter peat moss stuff. This time we just used organic potting soil and newspaper pots that a friend made for us.
3. Once the first signs of the secondary leaves began to sprout I gave them a dose of organic fertilizer. It stinks really bad but seems to work pretty well.
4. This is the step I am a little uncertain of:  we moved them out to the green house. The thing is that we don't heat it so if the temp. drops out there all the seedlings are going to freeze. We keep a close eye on the weather forecast & so far, so good. With the temps we have been having everything is loving it out there. Now we just need to make sure to vent when it gets real warm--the other day it was 120 in there and nice and humid--perhaps a smidge too warm.

Our handy 'gutter' system allows us (kids included--they generally fight over the chore) to pour compost tea in the top tray and it trickles down to all the plants and then back in the bucket to be used again.

We've got peppers and tomatillo seeds started.  Last year we tried the minimally successful method of stacking boxes with the potatoes, this year we're trying the old fashioned method of growing the potatoes in the ground and some are now poking up through the straw--very exciting; plus, there's less lawn to mow!

GARDEN: Biodynam-what?!

We're starting to get the bees ready for Spring. Pollen patties and sugar water have been added to the hives, the new hives have been ordered while the old ones have been cleaned up. It's weird to think that in February Spring is here, but nature knows best. The bees are always the first sign. If you sit by a hive for a little while on a warm day you will see them bring in pollen. In early February they will drink sugar water like crazy and roll around in pollen--they will go for any food source you offer them. Once the first trees (in our case the red maple) start to bloom, they hardly touch anything we give them. This is my favorite time of year because now we know spring has arrived.

When Valentine's day came we even began to plant peas and the other spring veggies, right into the ground. This year we are going to start the conversion to BD, no that's not a disease. Bio-Dynamics is a method of farming/gardening that incorporates the spiritual into working the land. It's new to us, and another aspect of Steiner's (creator of the Waldorf methods) research. We have just started learning this past year so are by no means experts, but I will attempt to explain what I understand.

If you look up into the sky at night you will see a host of stars, if its clear anyhow. These stars form constellations and are made of planets too. Each planet, just like the moon and the sun, reflect certain cosmic forces down onto the earth at very specific times. So, when a certain planet aligns with or against the moon or sun certain forces are reflected strongly towards the earth.

These forces can be broken up into a few different days. In no particular order they are leaf, root, flower, and fruit. So, depending on when and where the planets, moon, sun and constellations are you plant certain things. Example: if you want good tomatoes, you plant them on a fruit day. Ever had a really good tomato crop one year and the next year did everything exactly the same but had a bad crop? It could be that you planted the tomatoes the second year on different kind of day. That is one part.

This book is fantastic for learning/explaining the processes

The other part, the part that has really attracted us to this method of gardening, is the idea that there is more to the earth than dirt. That just because you cant see something does not mean it does not exist. The earth--the 'dirt', has a spiritual element to it. This element needs to be acknowledged and respected, just as we work the physical soil we also need to work with the spiritual realm of the garden/farm to help heal the earth. When we can restore the right balance in the soil and plants we will be able to once again have produce that restores our bodies and the planet more effectively. The produce will have spiritual nourishment along with the physical.

Of course, we apply our faith to our life in a very physical way (what we eat/don't eat, what we wear, when we celebrate, etc). All of this connects us very spiritually to our faith, and in turn our understanding of nature has come to incorporate. In learning about Rudolf Steiner, while some of his particular word choice is different than ours may be, it rings of the same theme--we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual place. There is a Creator who has breathed life into this planet and if we recognize our connection to it, we'll in another sense realize more fully our connection to Him. 

So, to take on Biodynamics in our own garden there is quite a bit that needs to be done. First with planting times, then with composting and other additives. We are going to try and document all this change this spring. Any advice or questions would be greatly appreciated! 

One more thing: we'd love to see what's going on in your gardens! We're hoping that you'll share with us, perhaps every Sunday. If you'd like to participate by sharing a link to your recent garden update, please post a linkie here! (& reference it on your blog, if possible).

GARDEN: Ingenuity on the Home Front

first of all: we spent a LOT of moments outside over the weekend. Not all work--lots of play (& bicycle riding).

but we accomplished a great feat. at least it feels nice to have come up with an idea, put it into action, and it seems to be working...

We created these 'shelves' for the walls of our greenhouse. It's not the world's largest greenhouse, perfect size for our backyard garden really, but we want to make sure that we're getting the most benefit from it. So, some sort of shelving system was in order. While building shelves wouldn't have been a horrible option, it'd be difficult to build some that weren't so deep that they crowd the space, and we most likely would have used wood which would have meant we'd need some type of container for the pots & water on top. It all sounded pretty costly...

So, we've been thinking. Inspired a little by a friend who used gutters as bookshelves in her room, and a little by this toy the kids enjoy, we came up with the above pictured contraption. You water at the top and it flows down, through a hole into the next gutter keeping all our little seedlings watered thoroughly. Best part is we can line all the walls of the greenhouse with them as we have the need.

What did we have to buy?

• 1 2x4 board
• 1 10foot piece of aluminum gutter
• 4 gutter supports
• 4 gutter end caps

Total cost: approx $12 & for $6/2 shelves we can add to our hearts content! It's terrific, really. Not to toot my own horn or anything--but for once my ideas were the major contributors to solving our garden needs. I think we both walked away feeling like engineers.

Spring is in the air around here--on top of these seedlings we have many sewn in our garden beds. It is still February, but surely the trees wouldn't be budding and the bulbs wouldn't be peeking through if it weren't time for new growth!