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Pea's are done

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 6:20 pm

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Hola Y'all:

Just a quick note to say that the sweet peas are done, pulled from the garden and packed in the compost tumbler. I'm not sure what I am going to put in that spot next. Maybe a three sisters garden there, or maybe a ton of pickles and zucchini will go there. With the compost tumbler packed I am going to see if I can crank out a 21 day batch of black gold.


Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

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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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Sprouts above the ground

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:00 pm

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Hello All:

I was excited to see some pea sprouts have broken free from my cold dirt in the garden. With the ground temp only 70 degrees f near the surface and about 45 degrees f 6 inches down these peas have moved one step closer to my table.

Here are some pictures of the sprouts. The white rock used as a background/size reference is about an inch or so long.


Sugar Daddy Snap Pea Sprout


Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow Pea Sprout


Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow Pea Sprout

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Last edited: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:08 pm

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Seeds in the starter Tray

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:16 pm

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My daughter and I started some other seeds in the starter tray yesterday. We started Burban and California wonder Bell Peppers, some Sweet Banana peppers, Marigolds and some Tyme.

We also have some spinach that I have to get into the garden yet. That spinach is Bloomsdale longstanding and some Strawberry Spinach.

You should see what I did to plan out my planting schedule. I put together an excel spreadsheet with columns for Crop, Sow timeline = +/- last frost, Days to harvest, approx plant date, approx harvest, actual plant date and expected harvest date. Our average last frost here is April 1, so that means for my earliest planting of items with a suggested plant date of six to eight weeks before last frost (notated in excel as "6-8 weeks -" ) would be 2/4 - 2/18. So with my Peas that went in the other day, with days to harvest of 60 & 68 days, I can calculate expected harvest to be April 22 & April 30.

The main reason for creating the spreadsheet was to figure out my planting succession plan, or basically what's there now and what's going there later. What I found out was that most of what I was planning would not work out. When I saw all of the sow dates in a row I realized that most of my veggies, spring garden (17 of 20), should be planted prior to last frost. The rest of my veggies, summer garden, should be planted about 2 weeks after last frost. There is a big overlap even with the earliest things like the snow peas. So now I am working on what will be planted where and most likely reducing the number of plants of each variety to squeeze in all I want to grow.

Well that enough for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba


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Seeds in the Ground

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:16 pm

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Hello:

Just a quick entry to say I have my first seeds of the year in the ground.

I put in two rows of Sugar Daddy Snap Peas and two of Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow peas today.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

This blog entry has been viewed 575 times

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Past Vegetable Gardens

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:25 pm

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Hello:

Here are some pictures and history of some of my past gardens in response to Gardenstew's question.

Gardenstew wrote on Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:19 pm:
Is this your first attempt at vegetable gardening?

Lets start with 2006 and work back. 2006 is easy to show because I apparently took NO pictures of the actual garden.

Now lets jump to the end of the season Last year I grew only seeds from heirloomseeds.com and these were some of their Giant Italian Paste tomatoes. I tracked the weight of 41 of these GIP maters and they weighed in at a total of 20.62 pounds with the biggest single one weighing 12.7 ounces.

Here is a couple more pictures of my harvest.



I took this batch of paste tomatoes and made and canned some sauce from them and here is a shot of the results.



I entered my canned goods from 2006 into the North Carolina state fair. I entered 5 items the tomato sauce as well as Strawberry Preserves, hot peppers, green beans and a spaghetti sauce with meat. The Tomato sauce is the second jar from the right.
I managed to pull three second place ribbons at the fair. All items (except the preserves) were just judged on appearance of proper canning processes and standards. They actually opened the preserves to check the taste and the consistency of the fruit and the jelly. I was pretty excited to get three red ribbons at the state fair, but now I have to defend my ribbons and try for blue ribbons this year.

==================================================

Well that was enough for 2006 garden now here are a bunch of shots of a group garden that I did a couple of years ago with my two best friends (one of which has also just started his own blog on gardenstew as well).



Tim Tilling the plot



trying to solarize the weed seeds.



young lettuce



picking greens



veggies galore



pea trellis



peas and horse



lettuce & carrots & potatoes & Peas & Beets



harvest



Lots of goodies

That was the spring garden and here are a couple of shots of the summer garden as it was first being planted.









I dont have any pictures of the community garden after this. The garden grew well and apparently we never took any more pictures.

That's all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba


Last edited: Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:01 am

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Answers to questions

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:21 pm

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Hola Y'all:

Here are some answers to the questions in the comments to my initial blog post.

Where are you that you are starting a garden now?

I am in Central, NC (also know as the piedmont) where the weather was in the low 70's this last weekend.

The dirt is beautiful. Is it naturally like that, or did you add amendments?

The dirt is definitely not naturally like that here. I have been gardening this spot for about 5 years now and prior to that this was a rose garden for three years or so. I have been adding my homemade compost the whole time as well as adding commercial bags of composted manure, topsoil and truckloads of leaves. I have not added any commercial fertilizer to this plot for over 4 years. Last year I did start using an organic fertilizer. I am also planning on sending in a soil sample this year for analysis to see what may need to be done to further amend it. Also, at one point or another the entire garden has been hand dug down two to three feet deep to turn in the good stuff into the natural existing sand/clay mixture the comprises the rest of the yard. To plant a tree one time I dug a hole using a pickax, a roto-tiller and a shovel to make the hole. After only getting down 6 inches or so I gave up for the day and decided to fill the hole with water to help make it easier to dig. That did not go so well....it took DAYS for the water to be absorbed.

What are you going to plant?
This is a vegetable garden and will be filled with Heirloom and organic seeds. Early Spring crop will include Snow peas, radishes, beets, fingerling carrots and maybe some greens of some sort. I will also be planting lettuce as soon as possible. Summer will include more lettuce/greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, beans, peppers hot and sweet. Fall will bring back the spring items and hopefully some collards, kale and such in the winter. I hope to run a 4-season garden this year. In the past I have only done spring and summer plantings.

Thats all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba


Last edited: Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:02 am

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