Hello, again.

This blog has obviously been inactive for quite a while. My living situation changed a couple of times, my schedule changed, and mostly, I wasn’t doing much baking, or even much cooking that was anything out of the ordinary. But recently, I described something I’d made, and someone asked me if I’d posted it on my blog, and then I made something else, and I found myself snapping a photo or two. So, I think I’m going to start with a post or two and see how it goes. CSA season starts up in a week or so, which will surely have me making some delicious food again. 

Cheers,

cat

P.S. Here’s what my garden is looking like this year. 

Back row: Lemon Cucumbers, improvised trellis we found in the trash, hopefully Sugar Baby Watermelons, Husk Cherries, Black Beauty Eggplant
Next row: Brussels Sprouts, Kale, Bianca Peppers
Next row: Kale, Dino Kale, Broccoli 
Front Row: Isis Candy Tomatoes, Patio Tomatoes, Walla Walla Onions&lt

Hello, springtime!

I guess I’ve sort of had an unintentional hiatus here! I’ve still been baking and cooking, but more cooking than baking, and lots of old favorites instead of getting really experimental. There’s always a certain point of the winter (even a non-winter like the one we just had) that I get a bit stagnant, but now, with the arrival of spring, I am rejuvenated! 

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I tried out one of those “artisan bread in five minutes a day” recipes. It was amazing, and probably one of the most successful bread attempts I’ve ever had. Posting about that is on my to-do list, and I bought a big jar of fresh yeast and I’ll hopefully come up with some great variations. 

I also am happy to report that I planted some vegetables today! I was considering not gardening at all this year because I’m scheduled for shoulder surgery next month. I’m going to be in a sling for quite a while, and I won’t be able to haul around my containers or sacks of soil or do anything really strenuous. But, I planted some small, manageable containers that I’ll be able to water with a watering can instead of a hose that I need to coil. 

I almost exclusively used seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I planted kale, a couple kinds of lettuce, the same peas & carrots as last year, spinach, green onions, and I started my sugar baby watermelons indoors. My littlest brother also told me that he suspects that the place he’s been growing pumpkins for the last few years is depleted in nutrients because they haven’t done crop rotation (they only grow pumpkins, and this revelation is undoubtedly because I bought him a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids), so we’re talking about planting some stuff over there to replenish the soil. 

I’ll be sure to post some pictures when my seedlings are up! 

Late August Garden Update

We’re about to get hit with a hurricane, which is kind of unusual for these parts. This morning, I went out and bought bottled water, and then immediately after that, I went to the garden. I took down my container plants from high ledges and set them in protected alcoves and under the eaves of the house, hoping that they wouldn’t be trashed from the storm.

There’s some great stuff happening out in the garden. The accidental tomatillos are growing wildly out of control. There are so many that the fruit just falls to the ground if we don’t go out to collect it often enough, and we’ve already given some away to multiple neighbors. This morning I went and picked as many of the ripe and nearly ripe fruits as I could, realizing that the strong winds of the storm would likely knock them off the plant.

My second sowing of broccoli is up and a few inches tall, but the small green cabbage caterpillars have been hard at work eating the leaves away. I thought I’d brushed away all the eggs that had been laid by the evil cabbage moth, but I must have missed some, as a fat caterpillar sat on a holey broccoli leaf today.

The second sowing of peas is up, too. Only a few of the very first ones that I planted came up, so I resowed a week or two after that. The very first ones have some peas forming on them already, and the others are a few inches tall and will flower soon. After their predecessors drowned so terribly in the spring, I’ve tried very hard to keep them under cover during heavy storms. The lettuce planted around the same time is also coming up nicely, though it seems that one variety is beating out the others.

I’ve got about three of these little sugar baby watermelons growing…

And we harvested a handful of ears of corn! (Before the squirrels got to it, unlike last year!)

Look how yellow it is on the inside!

I also have a burgundy bean plant climbing right up in this container…

And apparently, one of them that I planted in the yard did survive! Check out these awesome beans!

They’re this deep purple on the outside, and bright green on the inside, just like some of the peppers that we get from Farmer Rich.

Speaking of peppers from Farmer Rich, we got one pepper plant from him, and it’s fruiting now, too. If I recall, it’s supposed to turn to an orange-ish color, so they’re not quite ready to pick yet.

And finally, the pumpkins. The only variety that is really thriving is the Jack-Be-Little variety, both in the container and in the ground, and I’m attributing this to the fact that I started all of them in a container and then transplanted them. The ones in the container are much too large for the container but seem to be doing ok.

There’s that little pumpkin starting!

Sweet relief for fall planting…

It has been damn hot in the NYC area this past week (well, from what I hear, it’s been hot in a lot of places), and it actually reached triple digits this past weekend. We had to shuffle locations around for the birthday party that I made Aunt Sassy Cake for so that we could be at a house with air conditioning in the common areas, not wanting our friends to wilt away in the backyard heat. (This worked out splendidly as the change of venue meant we got to play one of my favorite board games, Scattergories!)

Anyway, Tuesday, the heat broke, and it went from being 103*F on Friday to a practically chilly in comparison 82*F. I was up early Tuesday morning, too, due to the aforementioned trouble sleeping Monday night. I was out of bed at 8 a.m., which is fairly unusual for me unless I have someplace to be, but that meant that it was downright nice outside. I quickly got a chore or two out of the way so I could head out to the garden.

Most varieties of pumpkins (except for the reeeeallly huge ones) need 90-100 days til maturity, but that means that they need to be planted between July 23rd and August 2nd to be perfect for Halloween, and between July 23rd and August 2nd, it is damn hot. It’s been so hot, in fact, that I wondered if I’d even be able to get my pumpkins planted, besides the container of Jack-Be-Littles that I planted one cooled off evening.

This morning, however, was glorious. I even perhaps went a bit overboard. I planted Luminas, which have a ghostly white skin. I planted Long Island Cheese Pumpkins (which are really cool looking, google them if you’ve never seen one!). I transplanted some of the Jack-Be-Littles from the container to the ground because I had a higher germination rate than I’d expected. And, finally, just for hahahs, I planted Giant pumpkins. Last year I also planted multiple varieties of pumpkins (Giant, Sugar, and Lumina), but our pesky groundhog frenemy ate so much of them that there was absolutely no success. This year, we’ve barely seen him, so I’m hoping that he’s found someone else’s yard to enjoy and that I’ll get a whole mess of pumpkins.

After the furious pumpkin planting was complete, I started another round of broccoli and one little burgundy bean container. The burgundy and soy beans that I started earlier this year fell victim to another member of the household not looking at the markers carefully enough. I’ve been seeing the burgundy beans at farmers markets, and I’d just love to have some, even just a few! As for the broccoli, this will be my third try. Last time was almost successful, but still not quite. Perhaps this time I’ll get lucky!

Lettuce was re-sown on the 18th, and carrots were harvested and re-sown on the 20th. Look how beautiful they were! They’re a variety called Parisian carrots, which are a short variety very well suited for container growing, so yes, they’re meant to be that size/shape!

Next up: get some more containers prepared so I can get some kale started for the fall. Anyone else doing a fall garden?

This is probably the last chance I’ll have to remind you that you should enter to win a gift certificate to Measuring Spoons on Etsy, which has neat stuff like baking-related handmade cards and soon, some pretty delicious baking mixes. So, check it out!

Made it out to the garden this evening…

Just a quick post to say that I did, indeed, make it out to the garden this evening once everything had cooled off a bit. I sowed Jack-Be-Little pumpkins in a container with a trellis (this could be awesome or a total fail). I also re-sowed peas and lettuce, trying to get things going again for the fall. Still more to do with that, but I’ve got to set up another container…

In Solidarity with Julie, because Oak Park Hates Veggies

I’ve been meaning to post about my garden for several days now, but first, I want to talk about something important.

In my life, I’ve been pretty active in social justice, but this blog isn’t so much about that. Sure, there’s no way to completely separate “Life” and “Activist,” but for the most part, I don’t get super political on here.

Yesterday, though, I heard about something that really pissed me off, and I thought it was important enough to share with you all.

In Michigan, in a place called Oak Park, there’s a woman called Julie who has a lovely family and a lovely vegetable garden that she started with her husband and kids in her front yard after a tree (planted by the city, mind you) broke a sewer pipe and did a lot of damage to their yard. Instead of just planting grass, they decided to make the space useful, and planted veggies in some tidy raised beds.

The problem -gasp- is that this all transpired in the front yard!

Now, Julie and her family have been through all kinds of drama with the city, where a vague ordinance was cited… and, [SHAME ON YOU, OAK PARK!], the city is actually taking her to court over this matter.

That’s right. Instead of fighting violent crime or theft or spending the money on budgets that have already been cut (I know around here, and in many places around the country, libraries and education and sports programs and art&music programs are suffering, just to name a few), they are taking Julie to court, and she is facing 93 days in jail. OVER VEGETABLES IN HER FRONT YARD.

Now, historically, we know that in times of economic depression, the Grow-Your-Own Movement rises again. And, in the present, we know that kids and adults alike don’t get enough exercise, time outdoors, or vegetables. So why the hell is this such a big deal?

You can read more about it on Julie’s blog, Oak Park Hates Veggies, and I really encourage you to take a minute to write to the City of Oak Park Planner, Kevin Rulkowski, [Here's the contact info - go ahead and CC the Mayor, who is on that page, too]. If you only have two seconds, there’s a petition to sign, and if you happen to be flush, you can contribute to her Legal Defense Fund. Stand with me in solidarity of Julie and in defense of the Grow-Your-Own Movement.

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Onto news of my garden. I was going to go out today to plant my pumpkins, but dang, it’s hot! 98* today. Perhaps this evening it will be tolerable, but now, at 1pm, there’s no way I’m heading out there.

Our brussels sprouts are getting bigger by the day (they’ve even grown since this photo):

Our Tom Thumb Lettuce came up and was delicious! Some of it’s coming back, but I need to resow, also, since all lettuce bolts eventually.

We thought for a little while that our broccoli was going to work out, as it turned into broccoli:

…but then it flowered (which was pretty cool, though). What can I say? No luck with broccoli so far. I’m going to resow that, too, for the fall.

The carrots are turning into carrots…

They’re bigger than this now, much wider around… now they just need to grow longer.

Our corn is coming up, though it’s in a different place this year and I think it’s less sunny there, as it’s not quite as tall as it was last year and it’s tasseling already. Hopefully it still works out. Our eggplants and peppers are flowering, with one or two eggplants trying to start, but no serious fruit yet.

And did I mention about our surprise plants?

We had three tomato-like plants growing up where I’d spread the compost and was trying to grow kale. The tomato-like plants totally took over the kale, and although I wasn’t planning to grow tomatoes, they looked so darn healthy, that I figured, why not? I’ll grow tomatoes, or whatever.

Well, whatever, it was, because…

…they started fruiting this week, and they are clearly tomatillos! That means the seeds were from our CSA. I’m just tickled. Two out of the three are tomatillos, and one is a tomato of undetermined origin, so we’re just going to have to wait a little longer for that.

Anyone have a fabulous salsa recipe? I’m going to have a LOT of tomatillos.

A quick note about the garden…

Just wanted to pop in with a quick garden update!

We lost most of the peas because they don’t like the heavy rains we’d been getting, and even under protection, they got soaked. We did get to harvest a few, though, which tasted great. I’ll probably try to grow these again in the fall.

I think I mentioned that I had to start the lettuce over again, and it’s now coming up beautifully. Of course, this week our farm share started up again, so we have leafy greens coming at us from all directions, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Here’s a photo of the lettuce:

I’m going to try to start a windowbox of lettuce in the fall and see how long I can keep it going. Check out this awesome windowbox full of salad! It belongs to Steve from Enjoy Time Outdoors, and I’m hoping that I can get a box growing as healthy as his in the fall.

That’s what’s up in the garden for now! I’ll try to get some photos of the brussels sprouts that are doing nicely in the ground when I get a minute. Also, today’s the last day to enter to win this set of measuring spoons, so don’t forget to head over there to leave a comment!

CSA plant sale goodies!

Yesterday we went to the CSA plant sale to pick up some seedlings from Farmer Rich. I wrote a post last year about it, and about how I think it’s cool to buy from our local farmer instead of a big box store. It was nice to chat about what we’re growing, how the weather affects it, and just talk with the guy who grows the food I eat.

Mostly I like to get Farmer Rich’s herbs. I haven’t had the best luck with herbs, and his are so, so healthy. We do get herbs in our weekly share, but it’s usually just one herb, and I like to have the little herb garden so I can just walk outside and snip off whatever I need.

This is the variagated mint. Isn’t it beautiful the way the leaves change from green to yellowish and then back to green?

Here’s the mint potted in an old colander.

Here’s the herb garden in a new window box we picked up today…

In there we’ve got oregano, lemon basil (which smells so good that I got two, one to keep in the house), sage (not pictured, I put it in after this photo), thyme, rosemary, and parsley.

I also got eggplants again, and Tita Leonore asked for a pepper plant (we’ve both had serious woes with germination of peppers this year), so I got a golden pepper plant. And, when we got there, we had an impulse buy: brussels sprouts! They weren’t listed on the online order form, and I can’t wait to see them grow. They are so cool looking.

My peas are being actual peas! Despite the fact that I thought they were all going to die because they got so drowned in the storms, they are producing.

You can see that some of the plant got damaged from the overwatering, but if you look in the left half of the picture, you also see a peapod!

The carrots are also getting very serious. We are so tempted to pull one and see where they’re at. We’re going out of town this week, so that will alleviate some of the temptation for a bit, and I think when we get back it will be time to check one out.

There’s more work for me to do out there, but it was hot and I didn’t want to wear myself out. Next time…

Baggie alternative and a quick garden update.

Thought some of you might be interested in something I picked up at the store today:

Ziplock bags are a really hard habit to break. We use tupperware when we can, aluminum foil when we can, cloth bags when we can, and we’re a lot less picky about things being in bags than we used to. What’s a little dirt sometimes, right? But when you grew up in a house where disposable baggies housed everything from peanut butter sandwiches to dry cereal to lego pieces, sometimes, you just feel like it’s the right solution.

So, when I saw these natural waxed paper bags, I figured that they’d be good to have around. There are occasionally times when it’s just not practical to carry a tupperware around with you, and these certainly seem like they’d biodegrade faster than plastic, though I don’t claim to have any scientific data off the top of my art school brain. (Nor, I should mention, am I affiliated with the company that sells this product in any way… I just thought they were nifty and I bought them with my own three dollars and nineteen cents.)

There you have it. Here’s a tiny garden update. Everything is drowning despite my best efforts to cover it. I think the carrots are doing ok, but I might lose the peas. However…

I went out in the rain this morning and snapped this photo:

In the foreground there’s the first of the corn coming up! I’m hoping the rows aren’t too crooked from the strong rain washing things away. You may be wondering what the plastic knife is doing in the ground… well, we don’t use disposable flatware that often, but on a rare occasion, we do. Then, we save the knives to use as veggie markers!

We’re supposed to get some sunshine with our rain this week, so perhaps someday the conditions will improve. Until then I’ll be hiding away drinking tea and making soup.

A momentary pause from the rain.

It’s been nothing but rain here for quite a few days, and will be for quite a few more days to come. The garden needed the rain, but not this much! I’m just thankful that we’re not in an area where rising rivers are threatening our homes. Friends near the Mississippi, we’re thinking of you.

Speaking of the garden, some of the veggies are just getting more beautiful every day. We’re also probably only a few weeks away from getting deliveries from Farmer Rich, so that’s exciting, too.

Here’s the broccoli and peas in the bottom bin, and carrots in the top bin.

The peas are actually starting to get a couple of flowers on them!

The apple tree is getting more and more leafy each day…

The chives in the yard are beautiful and flowering a gorgeous lavender color.

I didn’t even realize it, but the green onions from last year got put in the ground, and they’re up again.

Here’s the first look at the burgundy beans…

And here’s a picture of my rogue tomatoes, if that’s what they are…

I sowed a whole bunch of corn, but it hasn’t come up yet, as well as the soybeans, but I’ll just try to wait patiently until the weather sorts itself out. Until then…

Gorgeous weather for gardening.

The weather in the tri-state area has been just gorgeous lately. We spent most of the weekend sitting outside on the back deck, enjoying the greenery that has finally decided to appear on the trees (as well as getting a nosefull of pollen!).

The container garden that I’ve started is mostly doing quite well. The kohlrabi can’t decide whether it wants to live or die. The lettuce and spinach did die while I was in New Orleans, but I resowed it and hopefully we’ll have that come up. All of the tiny tiny seedlings that were in the trays inside didn’t make it (due, it would seem, to someone in the house, I won’t name names, wanting to be helpful and watering a bit too much). But, just about everything did ok outside, so I haven’t had to replace much. The only thing I really had a hard time with was the peppers, and I’ve started them outside again this week.

The carrots are doing wonderfully. And take a look at the broccoli and peas! Can you believe it?

Also, in the short week that I was in New Orleans, my apple tree (that looked little more than a skinny stick in a bucket of dirt when I left) grew a whole bunch of leaves! Check it out!

It’s warming up enough here to start sowing some stuff directly into the ground. We’re still not sure what our plans are for moving, but since we live with my partner’s mom, who also likes gardening, we can always just leave her a yummy harvest if we find a great apartment mid-summer. So, Sunday, I put in a short row of soy beans and a short row of royal burgundy bush beans.

We started talking about plans for a triangular trellis for the sugar baby watermelons, which I started inside today. Another summer treat we’ll have is corn. Today, I sowed about a 3.5′x3.5′ patch (I know that Charlie is going to tell me that I’m way off in my estimate, since I’m terrible at them) of corn. I have space on either side of the patch to do more corn, too. One of the sections needs to be cleared of forget-me-nots and weeds, and the other is ready to go. I’m planning to plant the corn in succession so that we don’t have a glut all at once. So, in two or three weeks, I should be ready to plant the next patch of corn. I may also plant my pumpkins over there, both because there would be room for them to vine and because they give important nutrients to the corn. We’ll see – it’s early for that.

I actually planted a handful of flowers, too. Usually I stick to veggies, but I had a wildflower mix that I decided to toss in a window box, and I’d gotten some painted daisy seeds from the seed library. I was planning to plant them in a pair of old polka-dotted rain boots, but they’re MIA at the moment, so I started them in pots that would set just about properly in the boots, and I’ll look a little harder for the boots in the next few weeks.

One last funny note about the garden. As you might have read, we had some hoop houses to keep the kale warm when it was very chilly. Well, I uncovered the hoops when I got home from NOLA, and the kale was doing ok, but I had some really healthy looking tomato plants, perfectly spaced out! It was pretty funny. I used compost to get that area going, so there must have been a few seeds that snuck in that our wormies didn’t process. They look so healthy that I think I’ll let them grow! With any luck, they’re seeds from the heirloom tomatoes we get in our CSA share.

A container apple tree!

Did you know that you can grow apple trees in containers? I found this out in a book sometime during the last year, and ever since then, I have been dead set on getting one. They have to be planted on a certain rootstock so that they don’t accidentally get to be 15 feet tall or something, but if you buy the right variety, and it’s planted on a rootstock that is fairly small (these are called “dwarf” trees), you can get a fair amount of fruit from a container apple tree.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on it, and I’ve gone back and forth on what variety to buy. Apples that are best for eating, or for cooking? What about their storage qualities? It should be a tree that’s fairly disease resistant, and one that’s partially self-fertile, since otherwise, I’d need to have multiple trees in order to get it pollinated. Maybe I was asking too much…

And then, it struck me. When I lived in England, I used to go to a fruit stand in Borough Market in Southeast London, and there, I had the best apples I have ever tasted in my life. They were a beautiful russeted color, with a sandy skin like a pear instead of a shiny skin, and the taste was unlike any grocery store apple I’d ever had in the USA. In fact, I’d never seen an apple like that in a store in the USA.

Here’s a photo of them that I took when I was living in London.

I wanted to grow those apples.

Problem was, I wasn’t quite sure what those apples were.

I knew the name of the farm in Kent, a place that folks like to call the Garden of England. They have an email form on their website, but I couldn’t get it to work!

“Would it be ridiculous if I were to call England to try to find out about this apple tree?” I asked Charlie one day.

“Yes,” he said.

“But I have Skype credit,” I told him.

“Ok,” he shrugged.

And so I called and left a voicemail with my email address, and a very sweet person called Joyce emailed me. “Lovely of you to think of our juice when you are so far away!” she wrote.

She told me that they grow Egremont Russets, which they find to be lovely for both juice and eating, and I must agree.

I then began my hunt for an Egremont Russet tree, but as I mentioned, Russeted apples aren’t very popular in the USA. While I did find a place or two that carried them, they were not only sold out for this season, but they only had them on a larger rootstock, meaning a tree much larger than I could manage in a container.

I sent an email to Orange Pippen Trees, asking if they might have it on a smaller rootstock next year. [Due to when you're supposed to plant apple trees, they generally ship in springtime only.] I got another kind email back, this time from Richard, who told me that they only did the Egremont Russets on the larger rootstocks, but he recommended a St. Edmund’s Russet, which will be available on a B9 rootstock. It’s another English Russet variety, he told me, that is very similar. He offered to set up a reservation for me for next year.

The St. Edmund’s Russet is partially self-fertile, but apple trees that are partially self-fertile tend to produce more if they have another tree around. This left me wondering… should I get a second tree?

I’d been considering the really, really small apple trees that only grow to be a few feet tall. Check out this video from Gurney’s…

A tree that tiny would be manageable (it’s barely the size of some houseplants!) and it would help me get a better crop on the Russet, which is what I really, really want. These dwarf trees tend to be a little more expensive (I’ve shopped around quite a bit), but Gurney’s is having a sale for $25 off a $50 order, so last night, I took the plunge and bought one. I figured it would also be good for me to get acquainted with caring for an apple tree in a container before the one that I’m really jonesin’ for arrives.

I ordered the Honeycrisp Apple Lil’ Big Tree Deluxe. (I got a pack of Jack-Be-Little Pumpkin Seeds to push the order over $50 to qualify for the coupon.) I love getting honeycrisp apples from the grocery store, and I can’t wait to taste them from my own backyard (even though it will be a long wait until I can taste them!). Orange Pippen’s site has a great feature that lets you make sure that the trees you’re getting are good pollinators for each other, and that helped me choose Honeycrisp as a variety.

The tree should arrive in April or May, and I’ll be sure to post pictures when it gets here! I’ll have to wait til next year for the St. Edmund’s Russet, but that should give my little guy a bit of time to get settled, grow, and get strong.

How exciting is this??

Seedlings are up!

A handful of the little seedlings that I have in trays indoors are already up! So far, I have cells of Broccoli, Blue Curly Kale, Tom Thumb Lettuce, Dino Kale, and Radishes coming up indoors. The ones that haven’t germinated at all yet are peppers, spinach, and green onions.

The weather’s been pretty awful here the past day or two, so I have no idea how the stuff out under the hoop houses are doing. I haven’t even peaked into the containers! I’ve just let them be. The forecast says we’ll have sun by the weekend, and I’ll see what everything’s up to by then.

Garden Frost Protection

As predicted, I was pretty sore and tired after getting my garden set up on the weekend. And, although I’ve mostly planted vegetables that do ok in cold weather, we’re still hanging out right around freezing at night, so on Sunday, Charlie and I went out to the store and picked up some supplies to help out the little buggers. Last year, I started my garden way too late, and the veggies that prefer colder weather had absolutely no chance. If I end up having to replant some of the ones I started too early, I’m not really gutted about it. I’m still learning!

Anyway, we went to Lowe’s, since there’s one very close to our house. They were selling a “frost blanket” for over $15! Ridiculous. They also didn’t have the hoops pre-made to set it up with. I’ve seen people protect their crops simply with plastic sheeting, so we went with a very inexpensive option – a plastic dropcloth from the paint section. Charlie came to the rescue for the hoops. He bought some bendy wire and promised to set them up that day. (I knew that my arthritic hands just wouldn’t appreciate fussing around with bending wire all afternoon.)

He did an awesome, awesome job! Look how great this came out!

Annnnd it’s a good thing, too, since the rain we were expecting yesterday ended up instead being about a half inch of accumulation of snow! It disappeared within a few hours, but it was not very springlike, and we’re expecting some again tomorrow. Hopefully my little kale will come up soon in the cozy little home Charlie made!

Container Garden: Go!

I am completely exhausted, but my container garden is officially in action!

Today Charlie helped me drill holes in the bottoms of my rubbermaid-type bins for my container gardens (the vibrations from the drill made my sensory issues from fibromyalgia go a little wonky!). I know a lot of people go with the dollar store type of container, or whatever they have lying around the house or can find on freecycle, but I bought new ones for two reasons: 1.) folks who use the kind that the dollar store has report that they have to buy new ones each year because they don’t last, and I don’t want to throw away plastic every year, and 2.) I don’t want to grow organic veggies in bins that maybe had not-foodsafe stuff in them. Since I’ll probably have some kind of container garden going for many years, whether I have a backyard garden or not, I considered it an investment. I was able to get “value packs” of Lowe’s brand rubbermaid bins for reasonable prices, and I picked up (if I recall) four 14-gallon and three 18-gallon.

Last year, I used a Jiffy brand of organic soil, but I couldn’t get that this year, and I was stuck with the MiracleGro Container Organic stuff, so we’ll see how that goes. It was a lot mulchier than the Jiffy mix, so I added some vermiculite to lighten it up.

We made a trellis for one of the containers like I’d said I would in this earlier post about my containers. It’s made out of old chicken wire and some scrap wood. The variety of peas that I’m growing don’t really need a trellis, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. Also, it will help me see how it works and make any modifications before I get my soybeans and burgundy beans going in a few weeks.

So, the peas are started, as well as an entire 14 gallon container dedicated entirely to carrots. Last year, all of my seeds were bought at a Cost Cutters that was closing, and they were 20 packets of seeds for $1. This year, I got just about all of them from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and I made really careful decisions about which varieties would be best for me. For example, when I chose my carrots, I got the Parisian Carrots that are shorter, fast growing, and well suited for containers. I made sure to add a little extra vermiculite to the bin, since carrots need a very loose soil.

I started some Broccoli in a bin as well as indoors in a tray. I also did this with my Purple Kohlrabi, Lettuce, and Spinach. I’m hoping that by starting some outside immediately and some indoors, I’ll be able to stagger things a bit. I’ll also be re-planting the veggies that can tolerate the heat ok, so that we have them as the summer continues. (Remind me to hold off on the lettuce, though! We have an overabundance of that once June hits.)

I also got a Radish mix for being a member of the seed library, but we don’t eat many radishes in our house, at least not so many that I need to plant them, since we get plenty from our CSA. My mom loves them, though, so I started a small container of them to bring over to her house.

I ended up planting one veggie in the ground and that was the Blue Curly Kale. We had a bunch of compost that we’d dumped into the main garden bed, and the soil just looked so awesome… As I mentioned in my other post, one of the reasons I’m doing a container garden is because we might be moving, but kale is a pretty fast growing plant, and I don’t think we’ll be moving by the time it’s harvestable, so I just went for it and planted that in the ground. Well, although the actual compost looked soft and workable, the ground was still pretty thick and heavy from the cold and the rain, so my muscles are going to be reeeeallly sore tomorrow. I did get two short rows of kale planted, though, and I can’t wait to see how it does. It’s still going to get pretty chilly at night for a while longer, so I might try to set up some sort of ground cover situation tomorrow for the kale. If I need to, the bins are manageable enough that they can be moved into the garage for a bit of extra protection.

That’s all for now… I’ll post more once the little buggers start to come up.