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Lettuce eat our greens, and reds and speckled and.....

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 4:25 pm

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Good Morning:

Here is the update on my lettuce bed. I have now harvested three massive heads of Australian Yellow leaf, Bronze Mignonette & Speckled Lettuce. We have also eaten Spinach and some mescaline mix. I had some sort of small beetle feasting on the Mescaline mix and the tops of my radishes. But I figured that's OK they ate their fill and now appear to be gone, all part of organic gardening. I guess they were good trap crops.

Here is a couple of shots of lettuce harvested yesterday.


This is the Bronze Mignonette


Speckled Lettuce


Check out the size of that Lettuce. The container is a glad ware 13 cup or for Gardenstew himself and the other Metric based people out there, 3 liters.



Besides the ones already mentioned there is butter crunch in the above shot.


The purple in the bottom left is Cherokee, the bright green in the center is Adrianna and there is more Speckled and Bronze on the right.

Here are some detail shots


The speckled lettuce is my favorite looking. I had thought that the speckled or Bronze was a lettuce I had read that Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello. When I looked it back up today I found that it was "Tennis Ball" I was thinking of, which is a butter head type dating back to the early 1800's. I'll have to try that one next year.

Here is some interesting reading for you regarding Thomas Jefferson and his gardening. Read carefully because there may be a quiz later. http://www.twinleaf.org/articles/vegetables.html I also found something very interesting regarding heirloom varieties versus hybrids today on the website vegparadise.com on their heirloom page

"Hybridized plants are the result of a cross between two varieties.
For instance, two varieties of tomatoes are chosen because each has
particular traits the grower wants to cultivate. When seeds are taken
from the cross-pollinated tomato, these seeds will not be able to
reproduce this crossed variety, but will revert back to one of the parents.
Heirlooms, which are open-pollinated plants, on the other hand, reproduce
themselves generation after generation."

That is something I did not know about hybrids. I'm afraid that I have become a bit of an heirloom snob over the past couple of years. I just have a bias against bigger better faster identical corporate style food, especially in my garden. I had better slow down before I get up on the second step of my soap box and give you a glimpse of my thoughts on corporate medicine vs homeopathic, the Pharmaceutical industry, corporate farming and the causes of the poor health in our modern world today.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry...


Australian yellow leaf. I love all of the texture and shades of green in this shot.


Bronze Mignonette


Adrianna


Cherokee


Adrianna close-up


Cherokee close-up


Bloomsdale longstanding spinach.

That's enough for now. Future posts (I'm still in catch up mode)
1) Carrots beets and radishes
2) Tomatoes and peppers in the ground
3) Herbs
and maybe
4)a little on the flower beds around the house.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

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Remember those Sweet Pea Sprouts?

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:41 pm

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Hola Y'all:

Remember my post of my little sweet pea sprouts? Well we have begun to eat some of them and check out these plants now.


Kind of out of focus but peas are on the right.















Thats all for now, next update will be on the Lettuce bed.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

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Drip Irrigation installed

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 10:50 pm

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Hello:

I'm still in catch up mode so here is a quick post to show the drip irrigation that I began installing back on March 12th and 13th, according to the date stamp on the photos.

Last year I used individual emitters that put out 1 gallon per hour. With those I manually put the emitters in the main feeder lines at the base of each plant or used individual inline drippers in 1/4 inch lines. That was a big ordeal in cutting the line inserting the dripper then adding more line, cutting...lots of work on my tired old hands. This year I am mostly using 1/4 inch line with 1/2 gal emitters built into the line every 6 inches. This is not as efficient but worth the work savings.


This is the drip lines in the sweet peas on the right and my lettuce on the left.


Sweet Pea sprouts




I love the nice dry paths.


Sweet peas


Spinach bed


Lettuce/spinach bed


Radish, Beets, Carrots bed

Thats all for today.

Seeya,
Uncle Jabba

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my garden: Defined

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 1:53 am

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Hello All:

I'm back after being lazy for a while and also after a PC rebuild that put me off line for two weeks. So I will attempt to put the posts together that I had planned as my updates over the next few days. I have been busy in the garden and have lot of pictures to share with you.

Lets get started with the definition of my garden.

websters defines a Garden as:
Garden
Pronunciation: \gär-den\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gardin, from Anglo-French gardin, jardin, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gart enclosure
Date: 13th century
1 a: a plot of ground where herbs, fruits, flowers, or vegetables are cultivated b: a rich well-cultivated region c: a container (as a window box) planted with usually a variety of small plants
2 a: a public recreation area or park usually ornamented with plants and trees <a botanical garden> b: an open-air eating or drinking place c: a large hall for public entertainment

I agree with that but I guess what I had in mind was the 6"x6" timbers that I used to "define" my garden.


This is a picture of my Cousin helping "define" my garden.

Sorry for taking the long way around to show you the new timbers around my garden but I could not help myself. I'll be back tomorrow with another update on the progress in my garden.



Seeya,

Uncle Jabba





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