Bring It On Summer (Part 1)

In order to make up for my lack of blogging, I've come up with a 2-part post (maybe more) to catch you up on the garden activities of late.

Part 1 is about our recent harvests. We've steadily been picking snow peas and shelling peas for just about a month. Snow peas have petered out and shelling peas probably only have 1 more small picking session left. Want to see how we've done this year?

We started picking peas every night before dinner (recall this post) and Bill and I would shell or destring as necessary, blanch, and tray freeze batches of them after Joe went to bed.

Now to compare, last year we harvested exactly these many shelling peas from the garden:

That is approximately HALF of 1/2 cup of peas. Yes, 1/4 cup of peas. Barely a Joe-sized fistful.

We did a little better this year:

Two full gallons, and we're not quite finished yet, though the 100+ temps have mostly halted pea production for good. Now, considering how fast we go through peas--the one vegetable Joe will ALWAYS eat--this will probably last us maybe a month, if I'm lucky. But it still feels nice to have homegrown veggies in the freezer. And speaking of freezer...

This, my friends, is an entire freezer shelf full of snow peas, packaged by the pound and quarter-pound. We hauled in a grand total of 9lbs of snow peas from ONE 25-foot row. This doesn't include what we ate fresh from the garden, either. I think if we had done another row and hadn't gone on vacation in the middle of the harvest, we might have been able to freeze enough to last until winter. Crazy.

While we're in the freezer, might as well show you the first of the carrot harvest:

Just a pint-sized bag of carrot coins, but more than we got last year by a long shot. There are still tons of carrots out in the garden waiting to be picked, but this is what we got while thinning them out.

Next up are taters & onions:

Not a lot of potatoes, considering I dug up 6 plants to get these. The plants were nowhere near mature, but we're in the midst of a full-on war with the potato beetles, and it was either dig or nothing. These I'll mash up and throw on top of a shepherd's pie this weekend.

The onions above are much more exciting. These represent a tiny fraction of what is still waiting out in the garden, and they are nice, large bulbs. Some I will cure and store in the root cellar/storm shelter and some I will chop up and freeze.

All of this is a fairly upbeat and optimistic view of what's going on out there, but trust me, the whole picture ain't pretty. I've mentioned the extreme heat and vacation; both of these resulted in almost all of my flowers dying, hot-weather weeds dominating the garden, and no more lettuce. Those pics are to come in the next part.

We've Been Busy

There are a LOT of peas out there to eat right now.

Pod People

Our first big harvest of snow peas. I've used a few in a stir fry and salad, but these were blanched and frozen for stir-frys of the future!

We're also starting to get a few shelling peas.

So far these pods are nice and long with lots of peas in each.

My Quads are Burning

Yes, that is a play on words which include both my aching legs and the re-energized garden quads. So, it should be no big surprise that I didn't accomplish everything on my list from last week, though I did get some of it done. It turns out that last week was even busier than I thought it would be, because of extra work and no babysitter.

However, we did make progress. First of all, Quad 2 is finally planted out. This what it looks like on paper:

I updated the spreadsheet with the fact that there is a potato wasteland at the end of one of the rows because the trench got flooded out and the taters died. We have since filled it in and I'm debating what will fill the space. This is what the quad actually looks like now:

Right to Left: Row 1: Broccoli/Onions/Radish/Swiss Chard. Row 2: Cauliflower/Radish/Potatoes/Beans. Row 3: Potatoes/Beans. Row 4: Corn.

I'll have to replant cauliflower in the fall because several of my seedlings have been eaten. We planted corn this weekend, and I'm not getting my hopes up because Oklahoma is tough on corn. If we harvest enough for 1 late summer meal, I'll be happy, even though I planted 16 rows of 5-6 seeds each.

Bill did the hard work of filling dirt in the potato trenches, and I planted green beans in a single row down the middle:

I actually found one sprouting just 24 hours after planting. I take that as a positive omen. I'm also please that some of the taters are blooming, which means we're getting ever closer to eating potatoes:

We're already enjoying the Swiss Chard, which was an experiment this year as I'd never cooked with it before. So far we've eaten it in salads, roasted with pork chops, and sauteed with spinach and garlic.

Quad 3 is a little over halfway planted, but it needs some work.

As you can see, there are a few rows in the middle that need to be planted. From left to right are 2 rows of peppers, nothing, a row of garlic, and 2 rows of tomatoes. There are herbs growing throughout and 4 eggplants in with the peppers.

The peppers seem to be doing well, but I can't say the same for the tomatoes. I did a poor job of hardening off the seedlings, and some of them succumbed to weather/pests. I'm going to pick up some replacement plants this week to fill empty spots. In the middle of Quad 3 will go okra, zucchini, yellow squash, and if there is room, purple hull peas. All of these things are normally planted later, which is why I've been lazy about getting them in.

Quad 4 presented a design challenge that I have finally worked out. This is where my winter squashes and remaining legumes are supposed to go, but I wasn't sure how I could lay out the space with enough room for the vining squashes to spread out while keeping them somewhat separated from each other in case we have another squash bug attack this year. What I came up with was alternating squash hills with bean sections.

It's kind of hard to see the mounds in this picture, but the beans are in the darker blocks and the squash mounds are in between. Each row will alternate so that the mounds will be little islands in the beans, and hopefully the beans will act as a barrier for squashbugs. Time will tell. I haven't finished prepping this quad because I ran out of bagged compost, but the blocks above are planted with beans.

Quad 1 is doing really well, and its success is keeping me sustained as I work through the other quads. Look how lush:

Okay, admittedly this picture is a little misleading because a lot of the green is weeds and grass. But the lettuces and spinach are doing very well, and I may be able to start freezing some spinach for later in the summer soon.

Carrots are coming up all over the place, and we probably could start digging up some to see if they are ready. The peas and snow peas blossomed late last week, so there are pods shooting out here and there. Tomorrow we will eat our first harvest of snow peas for dinner.

So there you have it. There is still a lot of work and planting left to be done, and I hope that I'm not too late.

If You Peas

This post should have been up a few days ago, but for some reason we've experienced hugely frustrating internet outages in our part of the world lately. The outages tend to occur when it is very windy, or right at 5pm. Good times.

Anyways, this is a peas post!

Right now my Oregon Sugar Pod II snow peas are growing like crazy these days. I wish I could say the same for the regular peas that I have (all 3 rows of them) but they're still sputtering here and there. In any event, the snow peas are supposed to be bush-like, which means that they don't necessarily need a trellis to grow on. However, how can resist these little hands?

If a trellis will make the snow peas happy, a trellis they shall have. And speaking of trellises, we've had a bit of a trellis showdown here on the WatRanch lately. Bill wanted to employ his design from last year, with some improvements. Last year we planted 6 feet of peas whereas this year we planted 100 feet of peas. Therefore, recycling was not a complete option.

This is last year's trellis. It was made entirely from recycled wooden pallets that we pulled from a dumpster and some twine. It did it's job for the most part, but to hand-string all of the twice would have been too labor intensive. So Bill improved upon his design by using plastic garden netting, more pallet wood, and PVC piping:

(Ignore all the Duplos strewn about. I have to throw them at Joe to distract him from walking all over the growing veggies.) There is a wooden stake in the middle of this panel to stabilize the netting. While I appreciate the help in the garden, it became evident fairly early on that this design was not quite perfect. For example, it was hard to align the netting in the middle of the peas, so there will be some that have to reach a loooong way to get to the net. Plus, it's not the prettiest design in the world.

My turn. By investing $.89 each at my local feed store, I bought several stakes of iron rebar and threaded it through the netting. That made it easier to pivot the trellis sections to reach the most peas possible.

Hard to see it, isn't it? The netting in the immediate foreground is the top of the trellis that I was standing behind. I LIKE that it's hard to see, because it makes the garden appear neater, which as you can see from the clutter in these pics, it isn't. In terms of stability, I think my design will hold up against our spring gully-washers much better than Bill's, but time will tell. And yes, I promise to report honestly those results.

Compare from right to left. Of course this will all be moot in a few weeks when the peas are blossoming and I'm too excited to care about neatness.

Quad 1 Update

Our plans for Quad 1 changed slightly, but not as much as I thought they would. The original layout included 4 rows of peas, which stayed, and a row each of lettuces and spinach. We cut the lettuce row short and planted onions at the end:

It turns out that I might have more onion sets than I could ever hope to plant. I've planted out another 2 rows in Quad 2 and will probably add some to Quad 3, though I don't know if that will be pushing it in terms of proper planting times for these.

It's nice to know that we will eventually be eating snow peas:

This row is chock full of sprouting Oregon Snow Pod 2 plants. I just hope that they truely do have a bush habit, instead of vining, so we don't have to put up a trellis for this row since we'll be building 3 other trellises. I think they are doing so well because a) the temperatures have been perfect for pea-growing and b) we used Joe food to fertilize them:

I really don't know how this cheerio got all the way out there by the peas, but there it was. Cheerios appear in the most RANDOM places here at the WatRanch.

Other Quad 1 news is that we will soon be attempting to transplant the lettuces that we sowed in milk jugs. I'm not seeing a lot of germination in the planted rows, so it's reassuring that the wintersown seeds are doing so well:

These are the "Flame" seedlings that will grow into pretty red leaves. I can't wait for the first salad!

I Love Today

Though blustery, today is an amazing 70 degrees and brilliantly sunny. I know many of you are still dealing with snow and frigid temps, so either this post will warm the frozen cockles of your heart, or make you really mad. I had to grab my camera and snap pics of the awesomeness outside (I'm trying very hard to avoid overused phrasing like "spring has sprung!" or "the earth is waking up!" so bear with me).

First the veggies.

From top to bottom are Oregon Snow Pod II peas, popping up nicely; Little Gem Lettuce seedlings; and one of many broccoli starts in the milk jugs growing true leaves. It was hard to get a good shot of the lettuce because it is SO bright and sunny outside, and because I couldn't get very close because of the mud between the rows.

Next up is the fruit:

It was next to impossible to get a decent shot of the blueberry buds with the wind whipping the branches around. These are the "Powder Blue" bushes that were rescued from certain death in the clearance section of the local feed store last fall, and they almost seem so grateful for the second chance at life that they are outpacing the "Misty Blue" bushes to bud.

Next are the flower buds:

These are buds on my little leaning pear tree. He may be slanted, but he's pretty.

These are buds on my beloved peach tree. It was worth braving the biting ice storm all day to break ice off of her.

And finally, the obligatory crocus shots, first blooms of spring:

Last year I didn't take any pictures of the crocus because I was waiting for all of the bulbing flowers to bloom, but they fizzled out before the tulips, etc. really got going. You can also see the pansies in the long shot, which came back despite being literally pansy-popsicles covered in several inches of ice. I deadheaded them last week and have been rewarded with big new blooms.

And lastly, the little human:

Mud. It does a baby good.



* I must take a moment to thank my husband once again for replacing our old craptastic camera this Christmas. I could have never gotten the bud shots with that old piece of junk. Good camera = good blog.

Lettuce Have Peas!

I woke up this morning to see that the ground was YET AGAIN covered with a layer of snow. I know that readers on the East Coast think I'm being ridiculous when I complain about the snow, but we live in SOUTHERN OKLAHOMA! In little over 3 months from now, the temperatures will be climbing close to 100 degrees. That means that we gardeners have precious few weeks--days!--in which to grow cold weather crops in the spring. With all the precipitation we've received, things just aren't looking good for sowing.

Phew.

However, by 11am, most of the snow had melted because the sun finally decided to make an appearance (nice of you to join us, mister!) and my grumpy mood had improved. I decided to take a few minutes to lay down some fresh compost in areas where the winds and rain (and dogs) had uncovered pea seeds. I was rewarded with a few of these little guys:

 

Peas! There are just a handful of these poking up, and only on the one row that we were able to keep covered with plastic during the ice storm last month. But my spirit is renewed, I will not give up. Come ON spring! 

P.S. I'm working on the post about Nonnie's spaghetti sauce with meatballs for tomorrow. Get excited, this may be the best recipe I post all year. ;) 

Hedging My Bets

I'm thinking of changing the name of this blog to "Overdoing It" and it's only FEBRUARY, people.

We've had 2 days of sun in a row and third promised in tomorrow's forecast, which of course has me climbing the walls and finding every excuse to go outside. I pulled back the plastic tarps on the rows of peas we planted before the ice storm, and there's not much going on over there. A few sprouts here and there, but also some duds. It's still a mud pit, too.

So I decided to go on a wintersowing spree. Well, not so much decided as just couldn't stop. I planted another jug of Red Malabar spinach and then started a jug each of Little Gem, Flame, and Gotte Jeaune D'Or lettuces. Since my cauliflower seedlings have been doing so well, I decided to pot up 4 more soda bottle greenhouses to add to the windowsills. Then Joe and I went outside to play around in the sunshine and the next thing I know, I'm planting a flat each of dwarf phlox and snapdragons. There's something wrong with me. My kitchen table is nearly completely covered with a variety of flats and plastic containers and I don't own grow lights, people! For now the sun and 2 CFL lamps are doing the job, but I think as the temps continue to rise, some of the bottle greenhouses will be kicked outside.

You thought I was done? You thought wrong. By the time evening rolled around, things were looking a little drier in the veggie garden, so I pulled up the plastic sheeting altogether. Then I got the itch.

I blame the Farmer's Almanac online gardening calendar for my itch. Today's entry says: "16th-17th. Plant Peppers, Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, And Other Above Ground Crops In Southern Florida,

California, And Texas. Extra Good For Cucumbers, Peas, Cantaloupes, And Other Vine Crops. Set Strawberry Plants."

That word--peas--called out to me. How could I let this extra good day go by without getting some more in the ground, especially knowing that the ice storm killed who knows how many, and that my dogs probably took care of a good number themselves. Besides, this time around I was armed with my newly-ordered legume inoculant to mix into the soil. So, I went ahead and planted another row of early peas and a half row of Oregon Sugar Pods II. Then I emptied what was left in the packet of early peas on the rows that I'd already planted, and lightly mixed in some inoculant, just for good measure. Am I overseeding the peas? Probably. Will I thin them out later? Probably not. The prospect of a huge stash of frozen peas is much too tempting.

Success & Second Guessing

I know it's really early in the gardening season to be freaking out about possible mistakes I've made, but I am. With so many variables to weigh about when to plant (which zone I'm in vs. actual weather, FA advice vs. actual weather, etc.) it makes my head spin sometimes. It's a little like parenting, because I feel like if I haven't done things 100% right from the get-go, I'm going to scar my little plants for life, if they even make it past infancy.

Three things are currently bothering me about the garden:

1. I planted my garlic last fall with zero consideration for how the rest of the plot would be planted in the spring. In fact, the row of garlic (A single row? Why didn't I plant them in clusters or widely spread in a few different rows?) is currently running perpendicular to the rows I've planted in Quad 1. I mean, I guess there's no law saying that all of the rows in each quad have to run in the same direction, but I feel like this is something I should have figured out in October instead of randomly planting bulbs (or not randomly enough). The nagging question of the moment is can I move the garlic bulbs now that they've started sending out shoots, or will that kill them?

2. Even though the Farmer's Almanac says that Jan. 15-Feb. 7 is the optimal time for planting peas in our region, I think the peas I planted on 1/20 are going to freeze to death. If they haven't been traumatized enough by the dogs, the weather is expected to be below freezing temps several days this week (Wednesday: 63 degrees, Thursday: 31 degrees and snowing). Surely this can't be good for them if they (miraculously) start to germinate early in the week, right? Should I cover them up with a blanket? I think I will. Granted, I am following the FA this year because last year I planted the cool-weather crops much too late and they died a sunny death, but now I'm afraid they'll never make it past January. Does anyone want to adopt 3 pea-loving mutts?

3. Just after direct-sowing these doomed peas, I did a lot of reading on inoculating peas and legumes to increase yields. I, of course, did not do that and I didn't purchase pre-inoculated seeds. My yield last year was laughably small, so in addition to purchasing A LOT more seeds this year, I'm thinking that I should have inoculated. This is probably the least of my current concerns because while I've already planted 2.5 rows, I still have another several rows to plant, and I can inoculate those. D'oh!

In other news, however, I AM finding early success in the seeds that I started last week. In fact, the cauliflower seeds started germinating an amazing THREE DAYS after I planted them.

Out of 4 cauli planters, 3 germinated and the 4th I'm not sure actually had a seed in it. At least, I can't see one, so I threw in another seed for good measure. I can't wait to get a couple more of these going, but I will probably need to go dumpster diving to get more soda bottles since we don't drink it here.

I have also had action in the broccoli planters outside, but they are moving very slowly (normal for this cultivar, according to the seed packet) so I'll try to get pictures up when there is green. 

There is also 1 sprout each in the petunia and yarrow flats I started last week, so that's all very encouraging. I'll probably still be a wreck until the "wintry mix" has passed us by and I know the peas will make it. I know I'm obsessing, but I can't be the only one, right?

And We're Off!

I told you it was a big week here at the Wat Ranch, and here's why. Last Sunday we drove down to Wichita Falls, TX (about an hour south) to pick up a truckload of bulk compost. Why all the effort? Well our own compost pile isn't quite ready and isn't nearly enough for our 2000 sq. foot garden plot. In fact, the truckload we did get was only enough to lightly till into a quarter of the plot, and I ended up making the drive again for another load to top dress the quarter.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What I really want to talk about is the fact that we have been making the most out of the 50+degree weather days (it was 75 yesterday!) to prep and mobilize The Wat Vegetable Garden 2K10. The cover grass and clover I planted in the plot last fall is waking up from being dormant and getting nice and green again, fixing all kinds of nutrients into the soil. To take advantage of the cover for as long as possible, we decided to work the garden in quadrants, only tilling and planting in one quad at a time. That way we will minimize erosion when our early spring gully-washers strike, and so we can spread out the trips to Texas for more compost.

Here is our plan for the first quad (looking at it from west to east):

We're doing a traditional 3-foot row, but companion planting in helper plants here and there. It's sort of hard to make things look "here and there" in Excel, but rest assured that the Nasturtium, Marigolds, and Carrots are supposed to be somewhat randomly scattered along the sides of the rows. The cool-weather plants in this plot will be among the first to succumb to the summer heat which will probably show up in May, so we'll be able to make use of the space again by replanting in warm-weather crops. That's the plan, anyway.

Here's what the quad actually looks like (from east to west):

It makes me happy just looking at this. It was hours of manual labor to unload all of the compost and till it in, which I dutifully noted as my workouts for those days. Our planting schedule this year will follow the suggestions for gardening by the lunar calendar as detailed in the 2010 Farmer's Almanac and according to the FA's "Best Days for Gardening" tips. Peas are the first veggies sown in our area, and the best day this week for planting was Wednesday. That meant that I had to hustle to unload the truck, rake up the rows, and plant the seeds before it started to rain. Yes, I was that crazy person sowing seeds as the sun went down, and eventually had to turn on the headlights of the truck to see by. I planted 2 double rows of Burpeeana Early Garden Peas, and a half row of Oregon Sugar Pod II Snow Peas.

One thing I hadn't prepared for was garden pests this early in the season.

It was already a chore to keep them from eating--yes, eating--mouthfuls of fresh compost while we were unloading it. That's why I put up my naive string "visual barrier" around the quad. I woke up Friday morning to find that the herd of mutts had decided to hold a WWF Smackdown event inside the quad. The string was ripped, stakes split, and mounds flattened from body slams. I was pretty livid, but since they were all limping around, obviously sore, I've just resorted to reinstalling the string and screaming like a crazy person everytime one of them gets close to the plot. I think the peas are okay, but we'll see in a few weeks when/if they start germinating if they stayed in the correct rows.