Hawaii

I haven't been busy with the garden lately, because I was in Maui for 8 days! My friend was getting married in Kapalua which was the perfect excuse to visit this amazingly beautiful place. I am having trouble loading pictures, but I will add them when I get the chance.

If you ever have the chance to visit Maui, I definitely recommend it.

Your first views out of the OGG airport show drier landscapes but beautiful mountains in center of west and south maui which are covered in clouds and lush green shrubery. Then you have the magnificent blue ocean. So many people hanging out on their surfboards along the coast waiting to catch a wave as the swells come in. (I did take some surfing lessons by the way, and was pretty succesful!)

I rented a road bike and travelled along the north side of the island through some nice climbs that took me to some pretty amazing places. The views were spectacular, but I didn't take my camera. Those images will hopefully remain in my mind for many years to come. The challenge those rides provided early in the morning was rewarded by nice relaxing days on the beach getting sun, surfing, and exploring the island.

When I returned home, I was hoping to find tomatoes ripe for picking! While none of the tomatoes were ready (there are so many green ones however), I was suprised to find a large quantity of cucumbers ready. There were huge too! I also found plenty of red and white onions anxious to be picked from their soil dwellings.

I'm trying to be patient with the tomatoes, but I am very excited about them!!

Consumption

Ahhh....to eat the very food you've grown. It's been pretty fantastic. My parents were gone, the food in the panty and refrigerator was at a very dismal level and yet I was still able to eat without making a trip to the grocery store! While it may not have been the most exciting meals, I was able to make a delicious beet salad and a simple lettuce, radish, and carrot salad. All from my garden!

Here is a picture of the salad I made with the beet greens, radishes, and carrots. I probably picked the carrots a bit early, since they were only about 4 inches in length total. But they were still great! With the beets, come an insane amount of beet greens. This is something that I think I will work on slowly harvesting throughout the next group of beets. I have read that you can simply remove one or two beet green per plant without harming the growth of the root below ground every week. This will keep the overload of greens to a minimum when harvesting the beets. Since they have such a high vitamin A content, it is hard to just let go to waste. We still have a huge bag in our refrigerator waiting to be cooked up. I have found some recipes that look to be interesting for cooking the beet greens. I will keep you informed of how they fair.

To try someting different from simply boiling the beets I tried a pickeld beet salad. I found a recipe online here. http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000320pickled_beets.php

It's probably pretty clear that I had a bit too much of the dressing for the salad. It probably stemmed from not enough beets, a problem I will make sure to fix next time around. The second to last harvest of this round of beets resulted in one beet that was at least 3 inches in diameter! How fabulous! I was very proud and excited to have such an amazing specimen from my own space.

What I love most about the beets is the concentric circles found within the root vegetable. Some are lighter than others, almost to the point of white. Most are simply a lighter shade of pink, but the pattern is absolutely beautiful.

Harvest Time

So…we’ve been able to harvest a few things so far.  We probably got the last harvest of spinach today…it’s getting warm.  One of my spinach plants started to produce a flower stalk.  I quickly cut it off hoping that I was able to halt the plant’s attempt to stop producing delicious leaves. The spinach harvest was quite large though, and we will be cooking it with salmon tonight. Delicious!  We also got two beets which were beginning to crown.  They are both pretty small, but should still be delicious.

Here is a picture of my harvest from this morning in our new $1 tote.

An upclose photo of the beets.

 

We've also gotten three radishes so far.  Oddly enough, one of the radishes is going to seed.  The stalk is incredibly thick and tall and is starting to grow a flower.   I really didn't even know this was possible.  The root is nowhere near ready at this point.  I guess this whole process is an opportunity for me to learn more about vegetables and their strange behaviors.

There are flowers starting to grow on my tomato plants.  That means by the middle of july we should start to be able to pick some fresh tomatoes right off the vine!  

It's been a month since I started planting seeds outside, and only a week or two since I transplanted my tomatoes and peppers. However...I already know that I love to garden! My mother has likened me to my amazing, late Oma (great grandmother in German). She used to have her entire backyard filled with bushes of raspberries, blackberries, and other vegetables my mother could pick to her own delight. My two aunts from my Dad's side also garden. So in all likelihood, there is a strong genetic component to this new hobby of mine.

All that aside...I just keep wanting to add more vegetables, but where is the space? So many vegetable need full sun, and despite my desire to stick them where that is best possible (right smack in the middle of the backyard) my parents are strongly opposed to the notion. So we are left sticking the new raspberry bush and asparagus amongst unsuspecting flowering bushes and spider plants. I suppose this isn't much different than placing most of the big boy tomato plants (kindly donated to me by a much more experienced gardener) around/under a birch tree. Who knows...maybe these crazy setups might turn out to be incredibly brilliant!

All I know is that they will have to suffice. That is until I have my own yard to create a vegetable garden utopia! Like the guy and his family in Pasadena....
http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/Garden/2006-05-01/Pasadena-paradise.aspx

I doubt I will ever be able to take it that far, but it would be fun to try!

Patience is tough!

I am doing my best to wait patiently for the vegetables to grow and mature, but it is really hard to wait! The beans are just barely breaking the surface now. I refrained from helping it...but my mom has no shame and gave the leaves a slight nudge out of the ground. Nevertheless, the beans are okay!! The picture shows two very small emerging bush beans. I planted two beans in each spot to help double the chances of success.

I am still a bit worried about the tomatoes, however. They are looking okay, but nowhere near great. This should be the last day of cold weather. I think the cages are a bit of an overkill at this point. Maybe it is sending good signals of what is yet to come! The dwarf marigolds shown are supposed to help deter deer but also encourage bees to help pollinate the flowers. My guess is the green fencing will be a bit more effective at keeping out the deer.

There are a few more pictures here to show some updates for the spinach, radishes, and beets.

The last picture is of the poppy planted among some pansies. Another flower is just beginning to bloom. We have already had a pink and yellow flower prior to this one, which again looks to be pink. How do multiple color flowers come from the same plant?

Cold Front

Since it was very warm on Sunday, I decided it was finally a good time to plant my 5 tomato plants outdoors in the bed. Unfortunately, mother earth decided to bring in strong winds and a cold front (known in the midwest as pneumonia) two days later. I am starting to get pretty worried about the tomatoes. They have been my favorite plants from seed, and I don't want to see them not grow to their full potential.

I also made a few mistakes with the pepper plants. I have read that they do not like cold weather, which is why I haven't put them in the garden yet. However, I have now left them outside overnight. Both times the temperature dropped to somewhere in the 40's, and the plants all looked incredibly droopy when I tended to them the following morning. After being indoors for a few days, they are healthfully sprouting perky, new leaves again. Whew!

Outside, my lettuce has started to emerge. The lettuce is planted with in planters mixed with some geraniums and spider plants. I thought it would be a great place to get some shade for the lettuce and also add some dynamic dimensions to the planter. The radishes have also started to come up. I have counted 15 so far! No beans yet...I hope I didn't let the soil get too soggy. The seed package said about 10 days to emerge, which brings us to today. So, I haven't gotten too worried yet. There is still time for something to happen.

I will attach pictures of the garden later today. The spinach, beets, and carrots are all looking fantastic and coming along great!!

Pictures...

I wanted to post a few pictures of my garden so far. The onions are much hardier now then when they were in their peat pots indoors. It's great to see them continue to grow new, healthy shoots! I have red and white onions intermixed. Which is which? I'll find out at harvest time.


The carrots are still quite small. Almost difficult to see, but they are there growing underneath the surface!

Here are the cucumber plants my mom bought. The third one is quite a bit smaller. So far, they seem to be happy in their new home.

Now to the beets...don't they look great? They are showing a lot of progress. I love the hint of burgundy that highlights the leaves and stems...so pretty!

Finally, the last picture is the heirloom spinach. I am soo excited for these plants. This is the most developed plant so far, and I love watching it mature.

Pretty simple post...I just wanted to show what I have been able to accomplish so far. I will be transplanting my tomatoes this weekend, and the peppers soon as well. Pictures will follow accordingly.

Second Plantings

After my extremely busy and fun weekend of martini bridal showers and downtown chicago bachelorette parties, I decided it was time for a second round of plantings outside. I opted to wait a few more days before planting the tomatoes outside, but I did sow the easter egg radishes along with the purple, yellow, and green bush beans. From my reading, radishes do not take long to germinate (as little as 3 days) and only a few weeks to be ready for harvest. I only did 8 bean bushes to prevent overload of beans. I plan to plant more every few weeks to be able to continue to harvest beans.

I also sowed a second row of heirloom spinach and cucumber plants that my Mom purchased for the garden. I was not originally planning on having cucumbers, but I found a great place for them and they will definitely be a nice addition.

Since this is my first garden, it was very difficult to handle the emotional aspect of thinning the spinach, beets, and carrots. I felt like I was killing those little seedlings before they ever got the chance to be something great and delicious! Clearly, I am very optimistic about my success as a first time vegetable gardener. I reconciled my internal conflict by reminding myself of the necessity of thinning to help promote healthy, full sized vegetables. So...thinned I did. It looks great, and there are still plenty of beets, spinach, and carrots to thoroughly enjoy!

Initial Blog

As far as blogging goes...I am a first timer. I plan to use this site to talk about a few different things including: my adventures in vegetable gardening, simple and healthy living, as well as my life as a student. Currently, I am finishing up my semester at the local community college in order to finish up my pre-requisites for Northwestern's DPT program in the fall. I have one more class to take in the summer, and then I'll be a full time student once again.

The other part of my life, is gardening. I just started a vegetable garden this year in my parent's backyard. Yes, I still live at home with my parents. I started everything from seed, minus a jalapeno plant that my mother bought me, which will be a very nice addition to the garden. Other than that, I have tomato plants, sweet pepper plants, chile peppers, spinach, carrots, beets, lettuce, radishes and some cinderella pumpkins and acorn squash to plant later in the summer. I think its a nice group to start off with.

Things have been going very well so far with the seeds, with the exception of two of my cosmos heads were eaten by either a neighborhood bunny or deer. Either way, I have put up a fence to protect against my growing spinach and beets.

I'll have pictures to post later about how the garden looks.