The Vegetable Garden Experiment

The first day!

2010-04-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

We had a successful planting day and all had fun! We managed to plant lettuce (two kinds!), beets, radishes, cilantro (have to make salsa!), and carrots. Have to plant the peas tomorrow because I forgot to read the directions and didn't realize they needed to be soaked overnight! :)

The kids had a blast and I enjoyed listening to their answers to my questions...one of my favorites was from my own, Hank (3) and his buddy Adam (3)...when asked what plants they wanted to grow in the garden, Hank replied a string cheese plant and Adam a meat plant...ahhhh childhood innocence! :) (Now if we could perfect a bacon tree then we'd be on to something....)

I think it's neat to share with kids how their food comes to be...their eyes light up when they put two and two together and realize that lettuce comes from these tiny little seeds - when they only usually see lettuce come from a bag!

Hoping to get the big garden ready to go so the tomatoes, peppers and more can go in soon!

And so it begins...

2010-04-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well, this week will be our first meeting of the 'Flamingo Garden Club'. We call it that because our neighborhood has unofficially adopted a plastic yard flamingo as its mascot (long story). The kids seem to be really excited. I've already picked out some of the vegetables (I told them they could vote but I've secretly selected a few things that they don't know about!) and hope to plant some this week. We need to get moving on the cool season crops like lettuce and peas so I need to get some grass killed here pretty quick! I noticed this morning that some wayward lettuce is coming up in our raised beds from last year. Had no idea that lettuce was perennial! Hoping our lettuce crop this year is more successful too!

I'll report back on our first meeting which is Thursday (Earth Day!)...hoping that 22 kids are ready to do some learning!

A new year - a new garden!

2010-03-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Last year we had a pretty successful garden - a few ups and downs, but not too bad! The other day I was driving and thinking about our vegetable garden and decided to expand it a little. I don't know if I was lacking coffee or just had a mind blank...but I decided to invite all the neighborhood children help plan, plant, and harvest our vegetable garden!

I emailed all my neighbors with kids and asked them if their kids would like to help in the garden...and I got all "YES" emails back! So my two boys, and 20 of their friends, are going to plant a neighborhood garden in our parkway yard. Stay tuned to see how we teach the kids all about fruits, vegetables, organic gardening, harvesting, bugs and critter control, and more!

(and stay tuned to see if I lose my mind...... :))

Anyone need any tomatoes?

2009-09-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Had a banner week for 'maters this week. This is only a fraction of the light bulb (yellow pear) tomatoes on the vine. My kids can't eat them fast enough! The weird looking yellow one is some unknown variety - I think the tags were mixed up on the baby plants I bought - but my hubby ate it yesterday and said it tasted better than it looked. A little bland but tomato-y and pretty. The round, baseball sized tomatoes (Wisconsin) are some of the best I've ever tasted. Nice and meaty without a lot of juice and seeds so they are excellent for sandwiches. My favorite from the garden this year is the 'Health Kick' Italian tomato. It's larger than a regular 'Roma' with a nice thick, hard skin and is dark red inside. It's a little meatier than Roma, but still is good to eat plain or in a salad. Lately I've been cutting them up and just drizzling with balsamic vinegar and salt. Yum!

I'm tempted to can some of the tomatoes and make sauce or salsa or something. We have so many (and so do our friends and family) that we can't keep up with them! It's so different from last year when we had about three red tomatoes all year! The vines are starting to decline already but we still have tons of green ones too. I usually pick all the green ones right before any danger of frost and put them in the house. They will ripen inside (most of them) and we can enjoy them well into October.

Our cucumbers/pickles are officially done - the vines are all dried up. Hard to say why, probably neglect more than anything else! Oh well - we got tons and made plenty of bread & butter pickles. Next year we plan to plant two or three times as many pickles so we are able to can more of them.

One last thing - my cabbage are about ready for harvest. Two out of three heads did great. One head got all rotten (probably due to all the rain) but the other two are gorgeous. I'll probably just make some corned beef & cabbage or just smother them with peanut butter and eat them raw!

The Great Tomato Caper....

2009-08-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

I came home the other day only to find about 6 or 8 green tomatoes scattered around the lawn. I was furious...thinking that the raccoons we have seen recently around the neighborhood had invaded my garden. (At the time, it didn't occur to me that they probably can't get in my fenced in backyard...). I picked up the tomatoes and threw them back in the garden hoping that they would just eat the ones they left, rather than pick more!
A few days later...more tomatoes in the yard. Still furious...

Then...a revelation...and a certain dog with a green head...

Turns out our 100 lb. Alaskan Malamute, Lucy, has been "sneaking" in the garden and eating the green tomatoes. Her head is all green from digging around in the plants trying to get the tomatoes out. She tends to like green ones for some reason but has eaten a red one or two as I've found evidence strewn around the lawn. If someone can tell me why dogs like green tomatoes that would be great! Needless to say, we need to keep a better eye on her while she is basking outside so she doesn't destroy our whole crop!

I do have some beauty Italian tomatoes ripening now...we've harvested a few already...they are called 'Health Kick' and are supposed to have more lycopene than normal tomatoes. Lycopene is supposed to be good for you. I'll do a little more research on it and post next time!

FINALLY!!!

2009-08-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

We finally had a red tomato!!! It was a 'Wisconsin 55' variety and it was fabulous. There are two more beauties on the vine that are about a day away from ripening. My 'Health Kick' Italian tomatoes are numerous but only a tint of pink.

We have harvested about two to three cucumbers per day and lots of little pickles. My hubby made "fridge pickles" this week. He got five pint jars and they turned out awesome! Maybe if you are nice, we'll share! :) We've decided that we need to plant about 4-6 pickle plants as they don't produce enough to pickle in one batch. We only have two plants, and while those two are churning out pickles as fast as they can, we only get about a dozen per harvest.

Our cabbage look beautiful - we dusted them with a little Sevin (so much for organic!) because we had caterpillars but they seem to have moved on. We lost our entire crop of beets for reasons unknown but might sow some more this week and see if we can get a fall harvest.

We are learning a lot from our veggie experiment and hope that next year some of our "issues" will be easily resolved. But for now, we are excited to have lots of tomatoes coming on! My kids eat them right from the vine and stuff their little mouths with Light Bulb tomatoes so it's fun to watch!

WE'VE GOT A CUCUMBER!!!

2009-07-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

We finally have something worthy of harvest! Got our first awesome cucumber today. It's so nice not to have to use Dawn to get the oily junk off of a cucumber like a store bought one! We literally have tons of baby cukes and pickles that will be ready any day now. They are sooooo beautiful too! It helps to grow cukes on a fence or trellis. Nice long fruit that have no bug spots or discoloration due to touching the ground. So excited!

Trimmed a BUNCH of leaves off the tomatoes too. It helps to get rid of some of the "junk" around the base and hiding the fruit. Removing some of the large leaves at the base helps promote more flowers and also hopefully, promotes ripening. We have a million Roma tomatoes ready to pop any day now and the Light Bulbs are starting to form. Just realized that our "unmarked" tomato from Cub Scouts is a cherry tomato so we'll have a bumper crop of those too! Hopefully heat and sunshine will prevail and get these green guys turnin' red!

Darned Weather...

2009-07-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Well, the radishes are our latest casualty. From what I've read online, this weather stinks for growing cool season crops...even though it's cool! First my lettuce went bad due to the cool then hot weather and now my radishes up and bolted. By bolted, I mean flowered! Once they flower it's all over. We pulled them all out and had absolutely NO fat little red radishes. I guess the cool weather and lots of rain produced lots of green leaves but no roots. But never fear...we'll be seeding a fresh crop of lettuce AND radishes here shortly. They grow so quickly that we still have plenty of time to get another crop before summer ends. Hoping the beets fare better...

On the other hand, our tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs are growing like crazy! We have tons of Italian tomatoes already (none ripe yet...need the darn sun for that!) and lots and lots of little baby pickles! Our dill is doing magnificent so we'll be canning some pickles before you know it!

Bitter Lettuce...

2009-07-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

We harvested the lettuce the other night...but learned a valuable lesson: Pick lettuce before it gets too hot in the summer. I left it grow because it was just so beautiful but evidently, old lettuce gets bitter. So we pretty much had to scrap the crop. Bummer. I think I'll reseed some in the late fall and see if it works. I was so disappointed when I took a bite - couldn't get that taste out of my mouth all night! Guess I should have read up on Lettuce crops a bit more! Oh well - lesson learned!

We did however, have some great basil leaves to harvest. The Big Kid and I made some pesto starter (just chopped up some basil leaves with a few drops of olive oil in the food processor) and stored it in a ziploc bag in the freezer. We also stored some whole leaves in ziploc bags in the freezer. We wanted to try it both ways so we could see which version is easier to use. I also read somewhere that you can take a leaf or two and freeze them with water in ice cube trays. Just drop the cube into what ever you are cooking! We'll try that next!

Looking forward to some radishes soon...hope to have more success with them than we did the lettuce! :)

HOLY COW!

2009-06-21T17:59:00.001-07:00

Wow! We went away for the weekend and just got back and took a look at the garden. EVERYTHING GOT HUGE! It rained all day Friday and I guess it was warm here Saturday and Sunday and our little veggies sure appreciated it! (That, and the pile of fertilizer I put on each plant too...). The Radishes are only a few days away from harvest and the Basil and Dill are doing fantastic. The biggest change is in the cucumbers and tomatoes. Both have doubled in size and are setting flowers already! Yippee!!! Cukes and tomatoes love heat so the hotter weather has really helped! We should go out of town more often! :)

Things are coming along...

2009-06-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

We've got lots of sprouts! Almost every single seed we planted has germinated. We straight sowed (which means directly into the garden vs. starting them indoors) Beets, Radishes, Lettuce, and Spinach. We should be able to harvest our first Radishes in a few weeks. I think they are supposed to mature in 30 days. The lettuce and spinach will be close behind. It's time to thin out the rows a little too. I feel bad killing some of the seedlings but we'll have a better harvest if we get rid of the crowded ones.

Our tomatoes are suffering a little. Tomatoes like HOT, DRY weather with frequent deep waterings. While we may get frequent waterings with this rain, it certainly hasn't been warm. Hopefully some hot weather will come soon to give our 'maters some sun! The cucumbers are coming along. I pinched off some of the flowers to encourage a little more green growth so they can do better later. I had tons of cucumbers last year with very little effort so this year we'll hopefully have just as many since I'm actually paying attention to them!

I'll post some photos of our sproutlets soon! Hope your gardens are growing!

Planting Day!

2009-05-25T15:01:00.001-07:00

We got the raised beds all filled with a nice compost/topsoil mixture. I planted the seeds of the Lettuce, Spinach, Radish, and Beets and then the kids planted the rest of the pre-started plants. We use raised beds (and some mesh tents) to keep the rabbits away from our plants. It also makes it easy to conserve space and water, etc. We'll see how it goes. Last year we did just tomatoes in one of the raised beds. This is the first year we'll use both and put the tomatoes in my perennial garden vs. the raised beds.
In addition to the seeds, we planted three kinds of cabbage, bush beans, dill, cilantro, basil, green peppers and a bush type tomato (seedlings from our seed starting project).

Looking forward to a few days of cloudiness and rain to help get these little guys going!

More goodies!

2009-05-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Little One and I went to the Nursery today to get more veggies. Some things I just didn't have the time (or ambition) to start myself. We got a few more tomatoes (very anxious to see how the 'Mr. Stripey' tomato does...it's an Heirloom!) and some Cucumbers. My hubby likes to make pickles (yep, with the Ball canning stuff, the hot water, and all! Strange....) so we got two pickles, and two regular cukes. Also got suckered into some Bush Beans (why not try them!?) and some herbs. Now we are off to set up the raised beds and prepare them for planting this weekend!

BTW...just paid $3 for two tomatoes at the grocery store. Weak looking, pink, hard as a rock, tomatoes.....boy....harvest can't some soon enough!

MAYDAY!! MAYDAY!!!

2009-05-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

We had a bit of a close call today! I set the seedlings outside yesterday to bask in the warm sun. I watered them and left them out over night (in the biz, we like to call that "hardening off"). Well, I didn't realize that it would be hot and windy all day and our poor little seedlings took a beating. I rescued them as soon as I got home from work but they were a little worse for wear. The tomatoes have a few burnt leaves but seem to be fine. The peppers are perfect but the spinach is a little ugly. We'll see how they look tomorrow! I'm sure all will be fine!

Lesson learned: Don't put seedlings outside too early! I think they would have been fine if they were in soil in the garden but they were still in their peat pots in a Tupperware bowl! I guess the Little Kid and I will be getting the raised beds prepared tomorrow!

100% Germination!!

2009-05-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

Our seedlings are officially up! We had every single peat pot germinate (which is a feat of itself since the kids did all the planting!). Of course, I can't remember how many seeds we put in each one but really you only need one or two plants to germinate in each. Our tomatoes have their first set of real leaves (called "true" leaves) and the peppers are growing like crazy. The spinach looks so dainty but will grow up to be a pretty tough crop. I have yet to put them outside yet as it's been really windy and I don't want them to get beat up.

You can also see a great example of phototropism. See how the tomatoes are leaning toward the window? Phototropism is when plants grow toward a light source. I just keep rotating my box of seedlings and they grow back the other way. This keeps them from getting too leggy while in the house also!

Hoping to prepare the garden for planting this weekend and want to get the seedlings and some starts planted before Memorial Day!

EUREKA!!!

2009-05-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

It worked! We have tiny sprouts!!! The tomatoes all came up and some of the peppers are just starting to poke through! This is great - by the time they have a few more leaves it will be the perfect time to set them out with their friends! Hope you are having some successes at home - let me know if you have any questions!

Better Late Than Never!

2009-04-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

After a week delay due to lack of supplies (my hubby kept forgetting to bring home the peat pots!), we finally planted some seeds for our garden today! Hard to imagine green leafy things when the weathermen keep saying we'll get snow tonight.

The family that plants together, eats tomatoes together! We planted peppers, tomatoes, spinach, and some random flower seeds that we found in a drawer. We just used a basic seedling mix and some little Jiffy peat pots. The nice thing about the peat pots is that you can plant them directly in the garden, cutting out a transplanting step. This is especially helpful when kids are involved as the seedlings can be rather fragile.

Here's some photos of the process - all in all it took about a half and hour and was easy cleanup! Now we just need to find a sunny window so our seeds can germinate and get going.

Impulse Seed Buying

2009-03-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

We brought home some seed packets the other day. It was a random purchase but all were things we think we'd like. Some things we've tried before, others are new.

Beets - my hubby likes to make pickled beets and preserve them (go figure?)
Spinach - never tried it before but it looked easy enough
Radishes - LOVE them in a fresh salad or straight from the garden with a little salt
Bell Peppers - I dislike peppers but I was humoring my husband, he was intrigued by the multi colored mix
Lettuce - something else we've never tried, definitely have to rabbit proof that part of the garden!
Summer Squash - both yellow and green - I love zucchini cooked on the grill with a stick of butter. Yum!

So we'll see how those guys get growing in a few weeks. I will buy tomatoes and cucumbers already started. I also buy my herbs that way to avoid having to do too much transplanting.

Welcome!

2009-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

We usually plant a small vegetable garden of some sort each year - a few tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and dill - and generally neglect until it's harvest time! This year, I will blog about my experiences bringing a more organized vegetable and herb garden to my backyard. I'll give you tips and hints, summaries as to what is going on each week, and ideas on how you can do this too! There are bound to be ups and downs since I'll be involving my two- and seven- year olds in the process. Check back frequently as the season progresses on our Backyard Veggie Experiment!