Garden Journal 3/20/11: Spring Has Sprung!

Lilacs! (see them in all their sweet scented glory here)

Five more photos after the jump. . .

Dragon Langerie (Dragon Tongue) Bush Beans: Easy To Grow from Seed Heirloom Favorite #5

I'm always interested in hearing about gardeners' favorite varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers to grow from seed, so I thought I'd start sharing some of mine.

Previous posts include:

Growing Lemon Cucumbers from Seed

Parisienne: My Favorite Heirloom Carrots (so far) to Grow from Seed

Miniature White Cucumbers: An Easy To Grow from Seed Heirloom Favorite

Freckles Lettuce: Another Easy To Grow from Seed Heirloom Favorite

You'll find links to lots more of my favorite things to grow at the bottom of this post. And I hope you'll share your favorite kinds of beans to grow in the comments.

Dragon Langerie beans in my kitchen garden.

Realization of the Day:

I currently have 14 packets of bean seeds in my stash—and I haven't even placed this year's seed orders yet.

Since one of those packets is Dragon Langerie beans, I'll probably just skip that section of the seed catalogs this time around. Maybe.

I did a major sort through and organization of all my seeds the other day, and while it was a smaller job than last time (see the comments sections of that post for lots of seed organizing and storing tips), I still ended up with a quart size bag packed with seeds I again left in the magazine free box at the library—and it definitely felt good.

Seed catalogs specialize in seductive descriptions; how else can they make you go from I'm just going to order a few packets this year to Grand Total: $93.00 in under 60 minutes?

Freckles Lettuce: Another Easy To Grow from Seed Heirloom Favorite

Love lettuce? You might find my post How To Grow Your Own Gourmet Lettuce from Seed: It's Easier than You Think! helpful. And there are links to lots more favorite things to grow at the bottom of this post.

Homegrown Freckles Lettuce and Radish Salad with Easy Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Realization of the Day:

This lettuce could probably qualify as a Daily Dose of Cute. I mean after all, a dish of baby carrots did once.

Is it okay to grow something just because it makes you smile? Of course. People do it all the time with flowers and other ornamentals. And what's nice about growing cute vegetables—like these heirloom carrots, for example—is that you also get to eat them. This Freckles lettuce is cute and tasty.

According to Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine (from whom I ordered my seeds), Freckles, which is pictured on the cover of their 2011 catalog, is a unique and attractive romaine (Cos lettuce). Medium green leaves are freckled and blotched with burgundy spots. Flavor of the meaty leaves is great and they are very slow to turn bitter. Will add interest to any salad. 500 seeds for $1.25.

Garden Journal 1/13/11: New Year's Gardening Resolutions

Vintage metal buckets filled with garden plans, ideas, and dreams—and yesterday, lots of wonderful donkey manure for the compost pile.

Three or four years ago, I found myself wide awake with insomnia at 3:00am on January 1st, scribbling down a ridiculously long list of goals and plans for the new year. I don't think I looked at the list again until I found it months later in a pile of paperwork clutter, and naturally hardly anything on it had been accomplished. Talk about a downer.

It's good to have goals (and I've always been a list maker), but this year I'm keeping things straightforward and simple.

These are my garden related resolutions:

1. More gardening.

2. More garden blogging.

3. More compost making—or at least more some compost pile turning.

4. Keep my new beagle puppy out of my very unbeagleproof-fenced garden.

And last but not least, always on the list but rarely ever accomplished (some of you can guess what's coming here):

5. Keep better gardening records!

I think I can do it. Okay, maybe not the puppy part. But definitely everything else, especially since, for various reasons, I didn't do much of 1, 2, 3, and 5 in 2010. Here's to a bountiful new year!

So what are your gardening hopes, dreams, goals, and plans for 2011?

© FarmgirlFare.com, the dreaming and scheming foodie farm blog where my garden plans have a habit of growing out of control during the frozen and snowy days of winter. Yours, too?

Garden Photo Journal 12/25/10: On the White Side

Garden Journal 12/6/10: Eating Greens & Getting Organized

And Giving Away a $250 Best Buy Gift Card!

Mulching the Garlic Bed on 11-13-10

Realization of the Day:

December! Wow. December.

Realization #2:

Long time no garden blogging.

I'm not really sure where November went, but I do have photographic evidence that exciting progress was made in the garden. The bed for the garlic was nicely amended, the garlic was planted (actually that was done back in October—on time!), the garlic bed was mulched, and I even managed to score a new raised bed in the process (not the one pictured above).

10/31/10: Decorating the Kitchen Garden for Halloween

Boo!

Is your garden still giving you treats?

Want to see more spooky stuff?

10/31/05: Happy Halloween!

10/31/05: All Hallow's Eve

11/8/05: Did the Goblins Get Them?

10/31/06: Boo!

10/30/07: Halloween Construction Zone

10/31/07: Scare Cat

10/31/09: Pumpkin Substitutes

10/31/09: Don't Let the Goblins—or this Little Brown Bat—Get You!

10/31/10: Happy Halloween!

8/21/05: All in a Night's Work

6/26/06: It's Been a While Since I Caught a Spiderweb

10/19/06: High Wire Act

1/6/07: Precious Farm Jewels

2/2/08: The Return of Chucky

4/27/08: A Sunday Feast & a Mysterious Owl (more owl photos here)

6/13/08: Cloudy Morning Sparkle

8/15/08: Trying to Blend by the Barn

8/5/10: Flying Squirrel, Anyone?

© 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the frightening foodie farm blog where a couple of very blustery days ago, this piece of floating row cover actually flew up into that tree and the garden decorated itself. I thought it was perfect—until I realized I was probably going to tear the row cover into pieces while wrestling it back to the ground (it was really tangled up in the branches!). Fortunately my hunky farmguy rescued it while I wasn't looking—or maybe it was the goblins. Do you have goblins living in your garden?

Garden Journal 10-22-10: It's Time to Plant Garlic!

Planting garlic with Marta and Lucky Buddy Bear on 2-10-09

Realization of the Day:

I can't believe I might actually get my garlic planted on time this year.

When is the best time to plant garlic? There's no one right answer to that question, but in many areas it's October. If you live somewhere that has a real winter (as opposed to places like California and Texas and Florida), this gives the cloves enough time to sprout and get a good head start growing before the ground freezes and they go into hibernation mode. If you live where the winters are mild, you can get away with planting your garlic later. 

If you're minding the moonsigns (you can read more about how that works here), you'll want to plant your garlic on a fertile day in the third quarter, which promotes underground growth, because the waning moon is pulling things 'down.' This is also a good time to plant other root vegetables, like potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, and beets, though not onions.

How To Ripen Green Tomatoes Indoors the Really Easy Way

Green Tomatoes Harvested on 10-17-09

While you're waiting for your green tomatoes to ripen—or if you have a lot of immature ones, which probably won't ripen—you could turn some of them into my no sugar, so easy, salsa-like green tomato relish, which is one of my most popular recipes.

Will green tomatoes get ripe and turn red after picking them (or yellow or orange, depending on the variety)? Yes.

Is it difficult to get tomatoes to ripen off the vine? No.

Do you have to pull up the whole tomato plant and bring it inside? No.

Do you have to do anything special to get green tomatoes to ripen? No.

Do they have to be kept at a specific and/or steady temperature? No.

Will tomatoes ripened indoors taste as good as vine-ripened garden tomatoes? Probably not, but any homegrown tomatoes are going to taste better than no homegrown tomatoes—especially if you're enjoying them on Thanksgiving or Christmas. And they'll still probably taste better than storebought tomatoes, especially if you're buying them at Christmas.

Is a Digital Kitchen Scale an Essential Garden Tool? I Think So - Plus Five More Worthwhile Kitchen Investments for Gardeners

I've raved about my Oxo 11-pound digital kitchen scale before and no doubt will again. It's worth every penny of the $49.99 I paid for mine three years ago from amazon.com, but now they often have it for even less. (April 2011 update: it's currently just $42.34.)

Basil from the kitchen garden on 9/4/10

Realization of the day:

I literally cannot remember life before my kitchen scale. I often use it several times a day.

If you read the question in this post and your immediate answer was no, I kindly suggest you do these two things and then come back:

1. Go to three different places and buy a bunch of Swiss chard or kale—or even parsley or cilantro—at each one. Are they anywhere near the same size? Didn't think so.

2. Ask three people to measure out two cups of basil leaves for you, then lay the piles side by side and compare them.

Another interesting experiment, though it isn't relevant to my yes, you really do need a kitchen scale argument, is to buy a lemon at three different places and compare the sizes. Zest and juice them if you want, too. Yeah, whoa. Huge difference probably, huh? And how many recipes simply call for 'the zest of one lemon,' or 'the juice of one lemon?' That kind of drives me nuts.

But back to the scale. Once you have one in your kitchen, it's amazing how many things you'll probably find yourself weighing while cooking and baking. They're also are great for weighing postage, especially since you need to know the weight of a package if you want to print out a mailing label online and avoid waiting in line at the post office.

Garden Journal 9/23/10: Busy, Busy and Another Raised Bed Seeded for Fall

The bumblebees and I both love sedum autumn joy, which darkens in color as the season progresses.

Realization of the Day:

Okay, so it's probably going to take me months, rather than weeks, to get through that ambitious list I recently shared of upcoming blog post topics. But you knew that already, didn't you?

Garden Journal 9/14/10: How To Grow Asian (Oriental) Greens for Fall by Direct Seeding

Asian greens ready to be thinned and eaten on 10-10-06

Realization of the Day:

I don't think the little thrill over seeing tiny seeds sprout up out of the soil will ever go away. At least I hope it won't.

Realization #2:

I've grown a lot of fall vegetables over the years that I've completely forgotten about. Thank goodness I did remember to take pictures of them—or at least of some of them.

Okay, so summer is finally winding down, and gardeners everywhere are busy packing away their garden tools, preparing their beds for winter, and already thinking about next spring. If it's been a good year in your garden, you're also hopefully still picking delicious, vine-ripened bounty.

But what you should also be doing is starting a few fall crops. And this isn't as daunting—or exhausting—as it sounds.

Garden Journal 9/9/10: Dealing with a Doodlebug, I'm on Twitter (sort of), and What's Coming Up

My favorite kind of garden pest: cute, cuddly, and prefers meat over vegetables.

Realization of the Day:

I started tweeting but forgot to tell you.

Since I'm always behind replying to e-mail and comments (thanks for your patience!), not to mention garden blogging in general, tweeting isn't such a good idea for me. But for the last several months I've been announcing each new blog post on Twitter—mostly on time, though sometimes I still forget to do it. You'll find In My Kitchen Garden on Twitter here, and Farmgirl Fare here.

This summer has seen record number of In My Kitchen Garden visitors (welcome, new readers!), and I couldn't be happier. It seems gardens—and gardeners—are sprouting up everywhere, and about 20,000 inquisitive growers are finding their way here each month. Between that and our recent slight drop in temperatures (at last) I'm so inspired, both in the garden and on this garden blog.

My new goal is to write shorter posts, and post a lot more often. Summer may be winding down, but there's still all sorts of stuff going on in the garden, and always so much to share. Before we know it, the seed catalogs will be arriving! These are some of the things I'm planning to write about in the coming weeks:

Garden Journal 8/18/10: Tomato Season Has Arrived and the First Harvest is In!

Yep, that's it. Pretty though, isn't it?

Realization of the Day:

One of the nicest things about gardening is that the littlest surprises can often mean so very much.

A month or so ago, I changed my blog header to a photo that more accurately reflects the season: tomatoes! But ever since then I've felt like a guilty impostor. Oh, those are my tomatoes up there alright—I just picked them back in 2008 (at the end of October!). And while pretty much everyone equates the summer vegetable garden with ripe tomatoes, I don't actually have any growing in my garden this year. Or so I thought.

Garden Journal 8/15/10: How To and, More Importantly, Hot Not To Store Fresh Basil

Realization of the Day:

It's a lot easier to write off a garden disaster as a learning experience when it doesn't involve your entire crop.

The photo above illustrates one of the best ways to store fresh basil: in a fragrant little kitchen tabletop bouquet. Sweet looking, nice smelling, and obviously some very happy fresh cut herbs.

That's how I did things last year, when I had so much green and purple basil growing in the garden it kept bursting into bloom faster than I could use it up. This year I had a learning experience—with my one measly plant, which is why this post isn't called something chirpy like Hip Hip Hooray! It's Pesto Time Again! as was originally intended before the harvest.

Garden Journal 7/27/10: Harvesting Really Late Planted Garlic

Growing Garlic: Not Bad, Not Bad

Realization of the Day:

I'm a lot more excited about growing garlic after digging up this year's crop.

I'm doing a little back dating here, so that the garden journal date above accurately reflects the day I actually harvested my garlic, as opposed to the day—two weeks later—I'm finally getting around to writing about it. It would only be cheating if it were the other way around, right?

Last year I promised myself I would never again plant my garlic in February, which is about four or five months later than it should go into the ground here in southern Missouri. And this year I kept that promise—I planted my garlic in March instead.