A Brand New Year
So this blog has been fairly dormant. I guess it flourishes when the garden does and when the CSA basket is arriving, and then I lose interest.
Anyway. Our first CSA basket is due to arrive tomorrow, so I thought I'd post our first update of the year. As you can see we did a little redesign. The template we used before was intended for Word Press and just never quite worked for me on Movable Type. The words came out different sizes and it was crowded. I like this better. The picture is the one strawberry we managed to successfully grow last year. Here's hoping this years garden is more successful.
This year we've built quite the elaborate garden. We're doing Square Foot Gardening with a lasagna gardening method we got from Renee's Roots blog in the Statesman.
I started some of the baby plants as seeds in our little greenhouse indoors, and some of them as seeds outdoors. We built five 4x4 garden beds, two with trellises, so in theory we should get a lot of veggies. It being us though, it seems not likely. So far we've planted beets, cauliflower, spinach, and asparagus seeds (or roots) that have come to nothing. The first three are out for the season now because it's getting too hot already.
We've also planted cucumbers, corn, cantelope, tomatoes, beans (pole and bush), peppers (cali wonder, carnival, poblano, and jalapeno), eggplant, broccoli, herbs, strawberries,carrots, onions (green, white, and yellow). These things we have not given up on yet. I had to plant the bean seeds twice though, as the first batch never made it out of seed form into seedlings. So far there are little green tomatoes on the tomato bushes, broccoli flowers on the broccoli plants, and strawberries waiting to turn red (if they don't get eaten first).
Which brings me to my challenges. First, I am at war with the roly polies. The damned things eat up seeds and plants like nobodies' business. I have tried various methods of killing them, yeast water traps, wet newspaper traps, coffee grounds (that one doesn't work at all), and drowning them by hand. I need to make a chili spray to try on them next. There are too many of them. I don't know why they just don't go eat the decaying plant matter in the compost heap, which is their preferred meal. Oh yes, we are also composting now, and I've got little sunflower seedlings coming up to disguise the compost heap soon.
So in tomorrow's CSA basket we are expecting spinach, lettuce mix, mache, green garlic, turnips, and collard greens. Of these things, only turnips are tricky, but I have a few new recipes to try with them I will let you know about.
To kick things off, I offer a recipe for "Bacon" Asparagus Pizza:
Saute asparagus pieces and halved cherry tomatoes in 5 "bacons" (equal parts olive oil and liquid smoke or vegetarian Worcestershire sauce with liquid smoke in it- 1 tsp per slice of bacon)
top pizza crust with this mixture, mozzarella cheese, some goat cheese, season with red pepper flakes and black pepper.
bake 15-20 minutes
It was delicious.
Anyway. Our first CSA basket is due to arrive tomorrow, so I thought I'd post our first update of the year. As you can see we did a little redesign. The template we used before was intended for Word Press and just never quite worked for me on Movable Type. The words came out different sizes and it was crowded. I like this better. The picture is the one strawberry we managed to successfully grow last year. Here's hoping this years garden is more successful.
This year we've built quite the elaborate garden. We're doing Square Foot Gardening with a lasagna gardening method we got from Renee's Roots blog in the Statesman.
I started some of the baby plants as seeds in our little greenhouse indoors, and some of them as seeds outdoors. We built five 4x4 garden beds, two with trellises, so in theory we should get a lot of veggies. It being us though, it seems not likely. So far we've planted beets, cauliflower, spinach, and asparagus seeds (or roots) that have come to nothing. The first three are out for the season now because it's getting too hot already.
We've also planted cucumbers, corn, cantelope, tomatoes, beans (pole and bush), peppers (cali wonder, carnival, poblano, and jalapeno), eggplant, broccoli, herbs, strawberries,carrots, onions (green, white, and yellow). These things we have not given up on yet. I had to plant the bean seeds twice though, as the first batch never made it out of seed form into seedlings. So far there are little green tomatoes on the tomato bushes, broccoli flowers on the broccoli plants, and strawberries waiting to turn red (if they don't get eaten first).
Which brings me to my challenges. First, I am at war with the roly polies. The damned things eat up seeds and plants like nobodies' business. I have tried various methods of killing them, yeast water traps, wet newspaper traps, coffee grounds (that one doesn't work at all), and drowning them by hand. I need to make a chili spray to try on them next. There are too many of them. I don't know why they just don't go eat the decaying plant matter in the compost heap, which is their preferred meal. Oh yes, we are also composting now, and I've got little sunflower seedlings coming up to disguise the compost heap soon.
So in tomorrow's CSA basket we are expecting spinach, lettuce mix, mache, green garlic, turnips, and collard greens. Of these things, only turnips are tricky, but I have a few new recipes to try with them I will let you know about.
To kick things off, I offer a recipe for "Bacon" Asparagus Pizza:
Saute asparagus pieces and halved cherry tomatoes in 5 "bacons" (equal parts olive oil and liquid smoke or vegetarian Worcestershire sauce with liquid smoke in it- 1 tsp per slice of bacon)top pizza crust with this mixture, mozzarella cheese, some goat cheese, season with red pepper flakes and black pepper.
bake 15-20 minutes
It was delicious.
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