Last fall I picked up a real gem of a gardening tool in preparation for this year.  I picked up a portable greenhouse, so that I can start my seeds and plants inside the house earlier.  This is far preferable to me than using electric lights.   Last year I placed my seeds in totes and then covered the totes with plastic wrap to create a micro-climate conducive to seed germination.  It worked, but it was kind of tedious working with the plastic wrap.

Not so much with the portable greenhouse.  Now, I wouldn’t use this outside, simply because I think it would topple over in a gust of wind very easily.  But it works fantastic in front of a south facing patio door that we never use.  The plastic cover zips and also removes easily if I don’t need to use it.  Today I got to put my greenhouse into action.  No, I didn’t start any seeds yet, although that’s coming at the end of this month.  What I did do was plant a whole lot of bulbs which are sprouting.  In a few weeks I hope to have dozens of tulips with which to usher in spring.  Many of them will be planted in the yard, but I suspect because there are so many that many will actually end up being given away.  All told, I think I planted about… 80 bulbs?  It will be fun to see if they all take.

While it’s too soon to give a full report on the success of the portable greenhouse, I happen to be optimistic in thinking that it’s a fabulous tool.  I placed the pots into totes for watering purposes- I have to say, the plastic totes are also a gardener’s friend.  It felt fantastic to be working with dirt again, and I’m counting the days until I get to plant my broccoli and cabbage seeds.  I can’t wait!  It’s just 19 days away!

I just have to share this today.  I’ve been carefully selecting the tomatoes I want to grow this year, and as I’m doing that, I’m thinking about how wonderful the tomato harvest finally was when it started coming in.  At the time, this past year, I was regretful though that there wasn’t enough tomatoes at once to can a whole bunch of them.  Oh, I have a few jars, but I never seemed to have a whole ton of tomatoes at one time.  The one time I did have a plethora of tomatoes, I didn’t have the time to can them, so I put them in the freezer.

And I’m here to tell you that I will likely never can tomatoes again because of it.

See, when you can tomatoes, it’s a multi-step process.  First, you core the tomato and then you blanch them. This quick blanching enables you to peel the tomato.  So you peel.  And then you plop your tomatoes in a sterilized canning jar, and once it’s full, you make sure you have all the air bubbles out, and then you go through the canning process.  For tomatoes, that means a full 45 minutes in the boiling water canner- that’s a long time!  And while one of my favorite things to see is a shelf lined with home-canned tomatoes, I found a process that’s even easier.

When I froze my tomatoes, I only took three steps, instead of a whole myriad of them.  First, I washed and dried them, then I cored them, and then I popped them in a gallon freezer bag.  That’s it.  When the freezer bag was full, I sealed it up and put them in the freezer to freeze whole.   Now as I’ve needed canned tomatoes for a recipe, I’ve been heading to the freezer.  I pull out the freezer bags and fill a measuring cup with frozen orbs of tomato.

Then this sits on the counter for a few hours, or in a pinch, goes into the microwave for a defrost. Once thawed, they are very squishy, and the peels slide right off.  Then I simply give the tomato a squeeze or two with my hand to crush them a bit, and voila, I have tomatoes to use for whatever I need. These happened to be destined for a pot of chili.

My one bit of advice is to make sure that you don’t discard any juices the tomatoes give off as they’re thawing.  That’s tomato juice- and flavor.  I’ve already determined that next year I’m freezing tomatoes, as long as I have the freezer space to do so.

I received my Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog over the weekend, and this morning I find the Seeds of Change Certified Organic Seeds in my mailbox.  It’s certainly exciting, considering this seems to be the norm around here:

My garden is pretty much completely under snow, with more on the way. But I’m planning away and dreaming of spring.  Last year I ordered from Johnny’s and was very pleased with their service and the seeds as well.  I have not ordered from Seeds of Change yet, so I can’t speak as to how they actually are.  Considering that  they’re still going strong after 20 years, I have to think that says something.

Catalog alert!  The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog is out.  It’s absolutely stunning and beautiful! They have so many new seeds to pick from, and a good deal of news about what’s going on with them.  I’ve been very slowly digesting it and going through it, and all I can say is that it’s a shame I don’t have more space to plant in!  It’s the first seed catalog I’ve received for 2009.  I’ll be sure and update as they come in- although this is my favorite to order from.  I had excellent results with their seeds last year.  Even the ones that they said had low germination did fabulously.  I only had problems with one of the cucumbers I ordered, but I think that was my error, not theirs.  They put out a magazine too if anyone is interested, I’ll be subscribing to that this year as well.

It’s only the second official day of winter…

When I look outside and see all the snow on the ground, I admit, I get a little excited.  Because snow means it’s actually winter, and spring shouldn’t be all that far behind.  Never mind the fact that I live in Wisconsin, and sometimes spring doesn’t arrive until May, but hey! I can dream, and hope for spring to arrive in March… that’s a just a few months away, which means that in a few weeks, I’ll actually start spending some time planning.

In the meantime, all I can do is look at the snow and think about when it melts, and it’s very interesting to see the tracks in the snow.  Other than birds, I didn’t even catch a single glimpse of animals in the garden last year.  Granted, I had fences, but once the garden started actually growing, even the squirrels stayed out.  But now I see bunny tracks through the yard, squirrel tracks, and then a few trails that make me suspect a cat or two in the neighborhood.  That’s encouraging, as feral cats are wonderful for keeping the rodent population down.  After dealing with those ground squirrels two years ago, I’m thrilled at the idea of a cat or two roaming past.

I wonder how those herbs are doing underneath that snow…

Well, yesterday was the day.  We’ve been blessed with a few absolutely gorgeous days, and I just knew that if I waited any longer to put the gardens to bed that I would be out there in the cold working the dirt.  Most things were dead anyways, they just needed to be pulled.  When I saw all the tomatoes that had met the killing frost, I was amazed.  Really, those heirloom tomato plants are hardy and continue to produce and produce.  I love them!  Tomatoes attached to the vine were pulled and thrown on the refuse pile, tomatoes that fell off were hacked up with the hoe and mixed into the dirt to decompose there.

I left the two broccoli plants because they are putting out more flowerets.  I also left the chard because it’s still green for the most part, and I am hoping the plants will produce yet next year. (They’re supposed to anyways.)  All the herbs I left in for my wintering over experiment.  Of course, until it’s actually frozen I can continue to use them too.  The onions and leeks are still in the ground, as is the celery- which to me is kind of like an herb anyways.  Everything else came out- all the dead vines, dead pepper plants, and the carrots.

The carrots totally took me by surprise! I had quite a few to pick- an entire bowl full.  I’m not sure what’s going to be done with them, but something special, that’s for sure.  My garden also surprised me with a green cucumber.  How he survived I’ll never know, but when I was ripping out dead and brown cucumber vines, I found this one lone, perfect cucumber.  I also picked the last bunch of kale, which I’m hoping to use later today in a soup.   All lovely, unexpected parting gifts from my garden.

I took the time to break up all the soil except where things were planted yet, and I also mixed in a few armfuls of leaves along with the carrot tops, tomatoes, and lettuce plants.  The dirt from all my pots went in as well, adding a bit of lightness to some soil that was a little heavy to begin with.  And now the research begins.  I’ll be doing some research to see what organic fertilizers and materials I need to pick up for next year to work in.  I left my little fences up as I don’t want the soil trampled on when it is under snow, no doubt, some repairs will be in order for next spring, but I think leaving them up is the best idea.

And now the planning and thought process begins.  We have ideas for next year that we need to get down on paper, but I’m also contemplating the removal of one of the beds.  I love having all this space to garden, it’s fantastic having extra space to experiment.  But this fall we had some landscaping done around the house and lost a good deal of yard to the landscaping, leaving little room for the kids to play in.  So my oldest, most established bed may disappear to give the kids more space to play in.  We’ll see.  One of the reasons my gardens are around the shed is because that was not a majorly played in space- but with the loss of the side yard for hitting baseballs and playing catch… sigh…something may just have to change.

I’m not sure that there will be much posting here for awhile.  Maybe as ideas come to me, I’ll jot them down here.  It’s fantastic to be able to look back at my not-so-frequent posts and see my notes from the year.  I need to remember that now, for two years in a row, there’s still been garden production into November.  With a little extra work in covering plants during hard frosts, that seems to be doable with more hardy vegetables.

October makes me sad.  The inevitable killing frosts roll in and leaves go from their gorgeous fall colors to brown in no time at all.   There are times where I wish that I lived in a place where I could garden year round.  Maybe someday we’ll have that dream piece of property with a greenhouse so that I can do what I can.  In the meantime though, this time of year means I work on cleaning up the garden remains from this year, and begin the long dreaming process until April or May.  January, of course, brings the seed catalogs, so there is that to look forward to as well.

I keep meaning to jump on here and make the formal “the garden is officially closed” announcement, but it just keeps surprising me.  I covered the first two nights we had frost, but after that, I’ve just let it frost.  While a few things have clearly turned brown and dead, many have not, surprisingly.  I am still picking fresh herbs.  I’m thrilled.  I did a substantial harvest a few weeks ago and tucked herbs in the freezer, leaving a bit of the plants to hopefully winter-over.  The frost has not killed the herbs, so I’m still picking away!

One surprise this year for me is the celery.  While I don’t get these big beautiful supermarket celery plants, the celery I do get is delicious and cold hardy- when I come across a recipe calling for a stalk or two, I just walk out and slice one stalk off a plant.  It’s working crazy well, and has so much more flavor, as far as celery goes.  Carrots are coming up here and there yet, and of course, that crazy Rainbow Chard is still trudging along.

A big surprise though was those yellow Roman Candle tomatoes that I’d previously decided not to plant for next year.  They’re still going, and they’re still ripening on the vine.  Apparently they are very hardy, so I may just be re-thinking that decision for next year.  I was also surprised a few days ago to walk out and find enough broccoli florets to round out a salad for dinner.  I also have one bunch of kale out there yet, which has a future destiny as a pot of soup.   My green onions are also going strong, and as i have no idea what to do with them, most of them will simply be left in the ground as an experiment.  Will they come back?  Will they do something crazy next spring?  Or will they just die.  Time will tell.  In the meantime though, I have a delightful lentil soup to make, utilizing some garden fresh tomatoes and herbs.  Yum!  And yes, this photo was just taken, much of this was picked today, a few maters were from Monday.  I love my garden!

These are some of the ones I’m on the fence about for next year. First up is the eggplants.

You know, I’ve only had eggplant a few times in my life, and it’s mostly been an addition to grilled veggies.  When I eat eggplant I like baba ganoush, a middle eastern dip, and I also like caponata in small doses.  But everything else… I guess I could take it or leave it.  I do like the Asian varieties of eggplant, as they give me small fruits that I don’t know what to do with instead of large ones I don’t know what to do with.  I’ve made ratatouille this year, as well as roasted eggplant, but they just aren’t my favorite vegetable.  The ratatouille would have been fine without the eggplant as well.  So we’ll see.  They are effortless to grow, so I may continue with a plant or two, but I’m just not sure of the future of eggplant in my garden.

Then there’s these little peppers.  They are cute and delicious, but, I have to say, they are a pain to prepare. I could see growing these if I wanted to pickle little peppers (think cherry peppers), but overall, these are so annoying to cut to use in anything that I’m definitely not growing them next year.  Maybe a different variety of sweet pepper, but definitely not these.

Then there’s the patty-pan squash.  These were good for me this year.  Last year we ate so much zucchini that I literally O.D’ed on it. I have eaten very little since because just thinking about zucchini made me nauseated. However, the patty pan were a nice treat to have here and there.  With my little garden space, I don’t know that we’ll grow these again.  Hard to say.  Now I’m kind of missing the zucchini, and since I only have room for one such plant, I’ll have to think carefully as to what I’d like.

The garden is winding down overall.  I still have onions and carrots, and my herbs have exploded.  Today though when I went out to the tomatoes I found vines full of a fungus, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of a few days before my tomato season draws to a close.  Now I begin the planning process for next year, which is going to start this year with some soil amending, as well as a test for the herbs.  What herbs will winter over here?  We’ll find out.

It’s been a while since I updated over here.  I have a few notes that have been rolling around in my head for next year, and I really should get them down, so here they are.

We love the Indian variety of cucumber, Poona Kheera.  When it’s allowed to get a deep yellow with brownish-orange patches on it, it’s ready to pick, and oh, so delicious.  They’re sweet and extra crispy, easily the best slicing cucumber I’ve ever had.  Knowing exactly when to pick is tricky though.  Pick too soon and the seeds are bitter, pick too late and the cucumber begins shriveling up overnight.  The drawback to the Poona kheera is that the perfectly ripe ones don’t last long at all- maybe 2 or 3 days tops in the fridge, after that, they begin shriveling and turning into compost.  Overall, a keeper.  We’ll be planting this one again.

The Marketmore 76 variety of cucumber that I planted had poor germination, and thus far, only one pathetic cuke has grown to any size.  I now know that my soil is seriously nitrogen depleted, and I will try these cukes again next year after my soil has been repaired.

The three winning varieties of tomatoes this year are easily Green Zebra, German Red Strawberry and Dr. Wyche’s Yellow.  The kids favorite is the Dr. Wyche- a vibrant orange tomato packed with flavor.  My personal favorite is the Green Zebra.  The tomato flavor is bright and fresh with a touch of acidity.  It’s my idea of the perfect tomato.

The losing varieties of tomato are the Fox Cherry and Roman Candle.  I am sorely disappointed with the Roman Candle, there just isn’t much flavor there in my opinion, which is a shame since the bush is loaded with fruit.   I also don’t care for the lack of moisture- I prefer juicy tomatoes over fleshy ones.  The Fox Cherry is only a loser here because I didn’t get any fruit off my plant.  It keeps budding, but the all fall off.  The plants flanking it are doing great, but that one Fox Cherry is pretty sad.

I’m on the fence about the early varieties of tomato I have, the Siletz and the Sub-Arctic Plenty.  The Siletz are a very nice tomato- a smaller one, but not too small, and for first tomatoes, they are delicious.  Still, the plants aren’t as productive as I’d like.  The Sub-Arctic Plenty, while prolific, are small.  The fruits are quite small actually, and since they’re determinate, the last week has seen a majority of the fruit ripen.  We’ve eaten some, but I still only have 2 quarts of canned tomatoes.  They’re flavor is nice- I like just picking them off the plant and eating them.  Between the two, I prefer the Siletz over the Sub Arctic Plenty.  However, given that they’re early varieties of tomato and they’re producing the same time as the indeterminate varieties, I don’t see any value in planting them as an early tomato.

Speaking of Sub-Arctic Plenty, on my one plant I have a bit of an anomaly.  It’s planted right next to the Green Zebra, and some of the Sub Arctic tomatoes have come out as red tomatoes with a pretty orange stripe- looking like a red and orange cousin of the Green Zebra.  I had been under the impression that cross-pollination only affected subsequent offspring.  Clearly, that is not the case here, unless the seed came from a strange hybrid itself.  I have to remember to take a picture of these, and perhaps save some seeds from this specimen.

As to seed-saving, I won’t be doing it.  My plants are planted too close together, the seeds are clearly not safe from crossbreeding.

On to the tomatillos.  They’re doing well.  I made two batches of very different salsas and then shared a large picking with friends. I’ll perhaps get one more picking off the plants before they’re done.  Like the rest of the garden, they could have used a little better fertilizing activity on my part.

The eggplant have been interesting.   I wouldn’t say I’m totally a devoted eggplant lover, but the Asian varieties have been nice.  They haven’t been overly productive, so I’ve been able to use them here and there as I see fit.  We like both the Ping Tung and the Applegreen.  Neither one is bitter or tough, and they’ve been a delight to add to stir-frys and roasted veggies.  My only complaint is that they brown almost instantly after being exposed to air, making them look a little unpleasant.  Still, they’re smaller plants, which produce modest amounts of fruit in a compact amount of space.  We’ll be growing these again, maybe trying a few more varieties as well.

This is the picture above of the ping tung- long purple one.  The small round green one on the bottom is the Applegreen, and then a patty-pan squash rounds out the picture.

Patty-pan squash… you’ll sense a theme here on my veggies that aren’t doing so well and I think that theme is nitrogen depletion.  I get little tiny baby patty-pans, but then they turn brown and rotten and fall off.  I suspect a lack of nutrients, but given the number of ants in the garden this year, it could be the ants as well.

The pole beans go right along with the patty pans.  Darn bean plants aren’t producing.  I planted poles because you’re supposed to be able to continuously pick, the plant continues to put out blossoms and beans.  I got the first crops… and that’s about it.  It’s sad because the kids looooove beans and would snack themselves silly on pole beans.  Late in the season I planted some bush beans in empty spots, purely because the roots of bean plants produce beneficial nitrogen, and I figured if I didn’t get beans, at least I’d get the nitrogen.  I sure hope that’s the case because the bean plants themselves have been completely eaten by ants.  How there are still growing portions of plants, I’ll never know.

Radicchio… apparently these guys need to be started much later so that they’re growing in the fall and not so much in the summer.  I was out weeding and went to peek on my radicchio plants and found them literally rotting.  It was rather disgusting, they were rotting from the inside out.  Sadly, I had to pull them out, and for next year I’ll know to follow the planting directions and start them much later.

The brassicas continue to plague me.  I went from planning no brasiccas to deciding to try kohlrabi and kale.  Then extra space led me to plant a few broccoli plants, and well, you know those cabbage loopers came back in full force.  I’m glad I picked some kale when I could, because the cabbage loopers pretty much have had free reign- I simply cannot keep up.  I picked two broccoli heads, blanched and froze them, but from the two heads of broccoli, I easily squished two dozen worms.  Yeah… there’s a lot.  The kohlrabi leaves are looking like swiss cheese, and in the end, the Tatsoi was covered with eggs.  I don’t know what to do about the brassica crops.  We do like them, but they take up a lot of space, for one, and secondly, those cabbage loopers are disgusting, and those white moths are relentless- even when you have a guard-daughter catching them with a butterfly net all day long.   Maybe next year I’ll try planting them later in the season, and maybe we’ll also try some floating row cover and see if we can’t just eliminate the problem altogether.

The herbs, of all things, are doing fantastic! I have bumper crops of herbs, and I’ll leave them in the ground as long as possible.  It’s been wonderful walking out to the garden picking this and that as I need them or want them.  And I decided I like having them in with the vegetables.  When I’m pulling weeds, I just brush the herbs and a great scent wafts over and makes me smile.

My one fennel bulb is still hanging in there.  We’ll be picking it this weekend, I think, as I don’t want it to bolt or get woody.  The celery is still hanging out, although looking awfully scrawny.  I’ll just let it go as long as I can, and then if it’s not really edible, it will still make an excellent flavoring agent for stocks.

The peppers are disappointing.  I planted mini sweet peppers in the garden, and while the yellow ones are finally ripening up and treating my children with a fun little snack, the red ones are skipping the red and turning black instead.  The hot peppers, as it turns out, are anything but hot.  I think the weather has been to blame, as it was only truly hot a few times this summer, and certainly not overnight.  Peppers need that heat to develop their own heat, and low overnights are foiling any attempts at upping the scoville units.  Still, I have been using the peppers to make my salsas, they still have nice flavor, just not the heat I’d been hoping for.

Hmm.  What have I missed?  The Asian Long Beans, uh, that may be another lack of nitrogen, or they just don’t grow well here.  The one bean I picked and tasted certainly didn’t make me want another taste.  I may try them again next year just to see.

Okra I will not be trying again.  Total I got five pods, and when I followed the directions for blanching them, they all but disintegrated.  I can tell you, I nibbled on those shards of okra and I thought they tasted fantastic!  But I don’t know that they are worth the effort way up here in the North. I can buy decent frozen okra for when I want to make a gumbo or southern style stew.

The rainbow chard is the clear star of this growing season.  I have discovered that I love, love, love Swiss chard.  I don’t know how my family feels about it really, but I love it, and I love that I plant it once, and then continue to eat from it all season long.  I’ve heard it said that in milder climates, it even re-seeds itself!  I’ll definitely be growing chard again and again.

Beets and carrots are still plugging away and are like old faithful.  I always love beets and carrots from the garden, and we can continue to enjoy them as we pull them from the ground.

The spinaches and lettuces we thoroughly enjoyed, although my subsequent plantings failed miserably.  There’s got to be a good way to plant lettuces in the summer to be enjoyed when the tomatoes and cucumbers are ready.  I hate having to buy my romaine.

The only thing I haven’t mentioned is the alliums.  Those are a puzzle to me, and I guess I need to learn more about planting onions, leeks and scallions.  I’ve picked and used the scallions a few times, but the onions are clearly not producing, and the leeks don’t look much like leeks.  This was my first time every planting alliums other than chives, and I did so without reading up on them at all.  One of my winter projects will be to learn more about how to grow them properly in my neck of the woods.

I also need to research fertilizers.  Obviously my fish water wasn’t enough once the plants started actually putting out fruit.  I need to find good organic fertilizer that won’t wreak havoc on the soil or on us as we ingest the vegetables.

Time for a photo update!

First up here, we have some hot peppers.  These are the Anaheim Chiles, which I’ve heard conflicting reports on how hot they get.  I will say that I pulled one baby off the plant and there was very little heat whatsoever.  I’m hoping that they fire up a bit.  The plants have quite a few peppers on them, I’m just going to let them change colors a bit and see where they end up.  Very soon I’ll have tomatillos ready for making into green salsa, so hopefully I’ll have the hot peppers as well.

Next, these are some of the sweet peppers.  These ones will be yellow, and this year I planted mini peppers.  They’re called Sweet Stuffing Peppers and are tiny- no more than 2 inches across.  I’m tickled that the plants are loaded- I could probably pick some now to use as green peppers, but my kids are drooling at the thought of mini yellow peppers.

Remember a few weeks back I talked about my herbs and I mentioned that the basil was doing terrible?  check this out!  The basil likes the heat we’ve been having and has grown into some decent size plants!  I’m so excited about this- with all the tomatoes going on, I can’t wait to combine the two with some balsamic vinegar for a real salad.

Next, here are some eggplant!  These were an exciting find after our week away!  There are two eggplants growing on each plant, and I’m looking for exactly what I’m going to do with them.  The first one is going to be used in a curry, but after that… who knows.  These are the Ping Tung eggplants, and it looks like the Applegreen may not be too far behind.

My Chinese Long Beans have started producing… I am clearly doing something wrong.  All the photos I’ve seen of these beans show plants that are easily six feet tall.  Mine are maybe 18 inches tall, and the one plant has two little beans on it.  I’m certainly not going to be picking these yet, but to be honest… I’m almost wondering if there wasn’t a seed mix-up.  These so far look more like cowpeas than like long beans.  Time will tell I guess.

Then here are the Patty Pan Squash.  The plants themselves are doing remarkably well, and I can see that there will be lots of patty pans to come.  I found these little babies just starting to grow, which means that any day the invasion will begin.  Bring it on.

The Kale is still going strong, and I think that any day now I’ll do another harvest of the largest leaves.

Here is a close-up of the yellow pole beans- specifically Marvel of Venice.  These beans are doing remarkably well.  Before we left for our vacation, we had told the neighbors to help themselves if they started going crazy.  They did- they enjoyed a meal of green beans one night.  Except that they aren’t supposed to be green.  As the beans sit they’re turning yellow, so I’m waiting to harvest them, there are quite a few, if the plants continue at this rate, we’ll be putting plenty of beans in the freezer- something I really hadn’t anticipated.  Andy even had to extend my trellises an extra two feet- and the plants just keep going! These are definitely very vigorous.

This next picture is fun.  This is the volunteer patch-where we had the compost last year, and ultimately decided to get rid of it because we just don’t have the space for it.  So far we’ve found three tomato plants in here- what variety we have no clue, and this vining thing.  It doesn’t match either of the cucumbers we have growing- but looks very cucumberish.  It could be a pickle-bush, but time will tell.  We also had cantaloup last year, so there’s that possibility as well.  Andy found these a week ago when weed-wacking, do ultimately we decided to just let this part of the lawn go to see what we have here.

Overall, the garden is doing well.  Where I pulled out lettuce a few weeks back I planted bush beans.  My soil needs some vitamins put back into it, so bean plants seemed like the best option.  As beans and peas grow, they produce little nodules of nitrogen on their roots.  Read: Vitamins.  So when you pull out beans and peas, you should always leave the roots to fertilize the soil.  I figure if the bean plants produce we get bonus beans.  If they don’t produce, we still get some vital nutrients back into the soil.

If anything else comes out over the next while, I’ll be throwing in some turnips, more kale, and maybe some broccoli. It may be too late to get anything else to grow fully, but since last year it was mild right up to Thanksgiving, I figure there is a sporting chance.