Thanks For the Props, Peeps!

Much thanks goes out to Dan from Urban Veggie Garden Blog for the "Best Blogs Award" he passed on. Dan takes some of the most amazing photographs of his garden, harvests and all of his beautiful surroundings in Ontario. Check him out!
Like Dan, several weeks ago I was tagged by GrafixMuse's Garden Spot for an "Honest Scrap Award." She's doing great with her garden that she resurrected from disuse by a former owner of the house.
I'm thrilled and kind of tickled that people come around here to see how the corner yard is faring. Seriously, who sits around reading garden blogs.


Wait. I sit around reading garden blogs. HA!


Both awards state to pass them on to 15 or so garden blogs I keep up with, but since we run in the same circles and read much of the same blogs, I though to see if it was 'blog acceptable' to ask YOU to tell me what new garden blogs I need to keep up with. Can one ever really follow too many garden blogs?

What I look for in a garden blog:
Plenty of photographs to follow along with
Updated at least once a week if not more often
A TRUE account of gardening where strengths and failures are reported
An honest sense of humor can't hurt
Easy to read - Grammar isn't everything, but if it grammatical errors impede my ability to comprehend, I can't do it.

So leave a link to YOUR favorite garden blog, or shoot, even your own blog and I'll be happer than a dead hog in the sunshine. I'll put the list together for the next post and fulfil my obligations to the awards.


Thanks again GrafixMuse and Dan!!!

The Final Word: Zipper Peas/Cream Crowder Peas

The zipper peas came out some time ago. Actually, over a month and a half, I'm thinking. I never got enough to make a dish out of, which was sad. For some reason, the ants just love sucking the sap (or whatever it is) from between the stem and the flower bud. The unopened flower bud then falls off before the pea pod has a chance to grow. On the off chance they miss a flower, they then attack the joint between the stem and the growing pod. This was a picture of the storm damaged crowder peas before I ripped them out. I planted them by the SFG spacing and they did fine, but again, I didn't get much out of them.
Here is a picture from today of one lowly crowder pea plant. Yes, this is one pea plant. It's amazing the difference when they're given their space.

However, don't get too excited. The ants found this one just as well and I never got one single pod from the plant.

Do I still love zipper peas? Yes, most certainly, but I don't think I'll be growing them again. It's just not a feasible crop for a small scale garden. Now I get to plan what's going to take its place!!

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

If At First You Don't Succeed At Earning Lettuce Love...

Try, try again,

and again to beat the squirrels,

and again to thwart the chupacabra/dog,

and again to allow the acorns time to fall,

and you will be rewarded.

I harvested my first bowl of lettuce and chard and a fantastic carrot to boot. There is really nothing like that crisp nutty taste of fresh lettuce from the garden, is there? I honestly can't believe the lettuce is doing so well. I wrote it off as a loss for the fall, especially because of the acorn damage, but planted some transplants from the store on a lark because I was bored. I'm so grateful I did.

We've had an unusually mild fall so far; we've yet to get a good frost, but I'm not complaining. Things are growing well and in about 2-3 weeks there should be one head of broccoli ready to harvest. The rest will come in time.

This spring I planted the broccoli in a checkerboard pattern which worked out well. This fall, I tried the actual square foot gardening spacing for broccoli and it's not working as well, just as I had predicted. The plants are crowding each other out and competing for space. Since the sun moves to the side of the garden, and not directly overhead, there are some plants markedly smaller than the others. Some have even yet to start to head. Avarice got the better of me this fall, but I'll be sticking to the checkerboard method from now on.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

The Culling of the Cauliflower

I told ya it looked sad.
This was the only cauliflower left standing by the unmerciful chupacabra/dog. It thrived, hidden among the broccoli, for months, when all of a sudden, one afternoon, it looked like this. The leaves had no spring and were rubbery and limp. You could bend them almost in half without snapping them. The general opinion was that it was root maggots. I knew what I was looking for because my peas had gotten root maggots in the spring, but when I ripped out the plant, there were no root maggots at all. I was rather surprised, but maybe they're just way down in there and didn't come up with the plant.

I tried to get as many of the acorns as I could out of the largest bed. So many of them had already tried to root in. As I raked them to the end of the box, several little larvae of something or another came up with them (a different bed than the cauliflower's). Looks like I'll be using the tiller something fierce come the early spring to rip up any casings in the soil. Ants have also taken over the largest bed.

Has there been any consensus as to whether ants are bad or good for your garden? Will they eat my seeds, or take from or add to the soil nutrients? Should I get rid of them and keep them from coming back, or just suck it up and wear shoes out there so I don't get bitten?

The Cost of a Stamp and The Value of a Friend

I never thought I'd be old enough to reminisce about the price of staples. I took economics. I knew prices raised with inflation. Why didn't older people realize this as well and just accept it as fact. Now I find myself musing over the days when I could fill my gas tank for $10.00 or make a phone call for .25. The other day, the boy wanted a gum ball; the slot held two quarters. Even dollar stores are experimenting with larger denominations, holding to the fact that 'dollar' could mean any denomination of a combination of paper bills and not $1.00 itself. Prices on staples (bread, milk, cheese) do go up over time, but usually it's a gradual rise that we don't notice until we're there. Stamps, on the other hand, are quite a different matter. Whereas stamps held their ground in the .32 to .37 range for years on end, now it seems they raise the price every 6-9 months. However, we slap them right on the envelope regardless and send them on their way.

When Stefaneener of Sicilian Sisters Grow Some Food fame saw the post on how much my father loved black radishes, she offered to send me some German blue radishes. I'd never heard of them, but I was eager to give them a try. I never thought twice about asking her to affix the postage stamp to get them here, but when the seeds arrived today, they arrived with fanfare and an unexpected entourage.

I expected an envelope. I received a package. A good sized one at that....sent to Georgia. From California. Pricey it was. Far too pricey and big of a box for seeds, yet the seeds were there.

Aren't they beautiful, Dad? I can't wait to grow them. However, you'll have to help me translate the growing instructions.

But I said the seeds arrived with fanfare and an entourage:
I can only surmise this is Stefaneener's very own home-produced honey from her own hives. She wrote a fantastic blog entry about the process behind making it.

I salivated the entire way home, prolonging the decadence I knew was to be mine. It's delightfully unrefined, slightly textured, yet smooth, and pure self-indulgence. The sweetness is most assuredly there, but light, airy, earthy, and not overpowering. It's what honey should be. It's peerless.

Thank you Stefaneener. I'm giddy, but I'm sending back your postage whether you like it or not. Now you can decide if it's accompanied by some banana jam or a chunky peach and red pepper sauce.

The morning comes early. Sweet honey filled dreams.

Cole Crop Carnage

Ok, so maybe 'carnage' is too strong of a term, but it's alliterative, so it works. The cabbage in the side yard was looking fantastic. The front head is doing much, much better than the back one. I'm not thinking I can grow them front to back when the sun only travels in front of the box. I'm also realizing that one per square foot is far too little room for them. I remember looking through seed catalogues last year and seeing a miniature variety. That may be something to look into next year.
They looked great one day and the next day the leaves are turning brown from the edges in. Not all of the leaves, mostly the outer ones. I'm thinking it may just be natural and not something major that's wrong with them.

Now, there is something majorly wrong with my only remaining cauliflower plant. It was beautiful one day and completely limp the next. You can't stand the leaves or the stems up and I'm guessing by tomorrow the entire main stem will be limp as well. Rather odd, that. I'll most likely pull it just in case there's a disease or something that could spread to the broccoli that surround it.

I pulled five onions today to use as green onions in some potato and sausage soup. They smelled very good, but very strong. They'll surely flavor the soup well.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Lasting Lettuce Dreams

When the acorns had just about finished their migration from the trees to the ground, I took the chance and planted more lettuce to replace that which was obliterated. Now that we've captured and corralled the Chupacabra-dog, things are looking up in the lettuce world, and just as it seemed garden salads would be a pipe dream, I'm planning to go stock up on salad dressing.

I'm thinking that I can safely harvest a few leaves by the middle of next week. I just love the taste of the buttercrunch lettuce. The heading lettuce isn't growing as obviously as the buttercrunch. Last year's didn't head either, but just formed spider-like leaves all around. I assume I can just cut off those leaves like the butter crunch, but I'll let them go a little longer before I do that.

Since I knew I was planting this second attempt later than I should, I chose to use transplants from the nursery rather than chance starting my own. I'm glad I did, because the ones I did plant on my own for a second attempt are still very scraggly and haven't gotten true leaves yet. I found this variety of red lettuce. I've never tried this kind before, but it seems to be growing well.
I'm thinking about purchasing one of those "lettuce mix" group of seeds for the spring. It may be nice to add some variety to the mix. I'm not too keen on the more spicy lettuce, however, so I'd need to find one with a rather mild mix. Any suggestions?