And back to cold weather...

Winter harvest.

It's been warm recently and yesterday, it was in the mid 80s! My Lollo Rosso lettuce has bolted (flowered) and has become bitter--not so bitter that we don't still eat it, but it's certainly past its prime. On the other hand my sugar snap peas started blooming again and have produced a bunch of new pods.

My husband and I enjoyed a main course pear salad using all this lettuce and some of the come-again broccoli and peas. The next night we enjoyed a stir fry using the rest of the broccoli, peas and some wild garlic from the garden.  We love eating out of the garden.

This is the 5th or 6th round of small curds from the broccoli plants after the initial big florets. We like these better because they grow so quickly that they are sweeter. The plants are working so hard to produce seed and I keep interrupting them. Eventually, I'll allow them to flower when the next crop of broccoli starts to produce.

My new book is here!!

There are freeze warnings for tonight and the next few nights so my more recently planted cool-weather crops might have a chance to mature before the real heat hits later in the spring.  For now, the tomato and pepper seedlings are spending their nights in the garage.

The books are here!

My new book has arrived. Now I have to get busy and send copies to all the people who helped along the way. It's a long list! Thanks everyone; the book is beautiful.

Senator Rob Bradley and me.

Senator Rob Bradley

This evening I went to a reception for Rob Bradley at his new Clay County office. He's our senator for the Florida legislature.

I called him after the election to congratulate him on his victory and to convince him that environmental issues are important for the state of the state. By protecting Florida's ecosystems, we are helping businesses in many ways. Later he invited me to speak before the Clay County Delegation.

I wrote about my preparations for that encounter in my post over on the Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens blog: Supporting wildlife beyond your garden gate.

This evening I talked to his policy person, other members of his staff, and a bunch of other folks who attended the reception. Always good to work a room.

A Muscovy duck came a-calling

 A beggar...

 A Muscovy duck came to our front door the other day.  There is a small group of these Mexican natives that lives on our lake, but our house is not that close to the water and we'd never seen them in our pond out front. But this drake decided to say hello.

Maybe he was looking for a handout. When we told him that in our sustainable yard the birds have to find their own food, he turned tail and left.




I'm hoping the cool weather stays for a while. It is mid-winter after all.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Signs of spring

I've been so distracted by other concerns that I've neglected my garden lately. 

We've enjoyed summer green beans (from the chest freezer), roasted tomatoes, too, and even roasted peaches (turned into freezer jam).

A lovely excursion with middle-school students into the Garden (where I work) found us listening to early bird calls and noticing all the early-flowering Asian plants.

Hmm, it looks like another warm winter/early spring -- but, predictions are for much lower temperatures over the weekend. 

So we'll see.

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Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida is in the warehouse!

Melissa and I received the email from University Press of Florida today telling us that our book is in the warehouse and is ready to ship. Yay!

Melissa and I received our covers last week, but I didn't expect the book quite this early. If you've preordered your copy, you should have it soon.

We have created a book website with events open to the public where one of us will be a vendor or will be speaking. There is also order information and a blog.  Once we have reviews, we'll post those as well.
You can find it at www.floridavegetablegardening.com

I have many more events to enter on that page. I'll be on a three-month book tour from April through June. April is pretty well filled. What doesn't show on this page is all the Master Gardener groups I'll be speaking to because those meetings are not open to the public. If you have an event or group meeting in central or north Florida, that will be happening in May or June, let me know!  gstibolt@sky-bolt.com  Thanks.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Leeks fresh from the garden

freshly harvested leeks

I've left an assortment of leeks tucked in raised beds in the mountains through winter. They're so attractive, with their gray-green tops, and hardy, too. But I was noticing that a couple were getting REALLY big (hmm, about grocery store size, actually), and I was thinking that maybe they'd start forming flower buds sometime soon, if I didn't harvest them.

So I was delighted to see that they're in perfect shape (apparently) for eating.

Leeks are a relatively new vegetable for me to both grow and eat - I've just been growing them for the last 3 or four years. French leeks 'Primor' from Renee's Seeds (perfect as small, succulent "baby" leeks) have been amazing, roasted in a bit of olive oil. Yum.

I'm not sure what variety these leeks were -- I'll have to poke through some old posts, perhaps, to see if I can figure that out -- probably King Richard or one of the other standard varieties. I'm remembering that I have grew them from seed in flats started in cold frames early last spring, then transplanting them. Maybe they were 'Primor' actually -- I had harvested most of the leeks by late fall, to enjoy while still smaller.

These are certainly impressive to me as first "big" leeks!

 

Posted with Blogsy

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Cilantro & Carolina jessamine

Amazing to harvest fresh cilantro in mid-January for our black bean chili - tonight's dinner.  Normally it would have long have been frozen out by now.

And, I noticed the first Carolina jessamine flowers outside my study window, too.  Not to mention the crocuses that have popped up over the last few days, too.

Hmm, can spring really be on the way?  It's sort of feeling like that, as I'm weeding out the chickweed and henbit from my containers, and am faced with an explosion of winter annuals out in the garden!

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Arugula

My arugula patches have sailed through the winter, so far, both here in the Piedmont and in the mountains. Of course, the winter has been mild! (It was 70° F this afternoon - peculiar).

I had the idea that arugula's frost tolerance was more like "normal" lettuce (not Winter Density or North Pole or Arctic King), and so it's been a revelation to have these flourishing patches -- happily, it's the one "green" (along with cilantro) that deer haven't eaten in the satellite garden (in the Piedmont). 

It's a bit discouraging to think I'll need to fence/protect/defend my less 'spicy' greens from deer, if I want to grow them. Kale, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, collards, etc. have all disappeared as deer forage over the last few cool-weather seasons.  Even French sorrel -- yikes.

Happily, in the mountains, my raised beds are in front of the house, and I don't think we have deer (yet), and only very brave woodchucks venture that far out of the woodland ravine behind the house (in dry summers, primarily).

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Tomatoes & Peppers from Seed.

Last week my husband and I started our tomato and pepper seeds. We want the seedlings to have a good head start before setting them out in the garden--approximately two months from now. We hope to pot them up to larger pots at least a few weeks before we set them out in the garden.

On the right, a pot half full with mostly composted chips.
On the left, the pot has the seed starter mix on the top.

I'd purchased some organic seed starter soil so the seedlings would have the best chance for success.  This type of potting soil is sterilized to combat damping off and other fungi that sometimes damage new seedlings. We put mostly composted wood chips* in the bottom half of each pot and then added the sterile soil on top to about half and inch from the rim of the pots.

These pots have been used many times, but after each use I wash them with rain barrel water and a brush. Then they are thoroughly dried in the sun before storing them until the next season. 

Wetting the soil.

The next task is to thoroughly wet the soil. We slowly dribble rain barrel water on each pot. 

Pouring out the seeds.

We set up the pots on spare downspout drainage diverter trays. (They are no longer needed for our downspouts because we've installed rain barrels.)  When we are in the process of soaking the pots, we can tip them up to hold the water, but they also work well for draining away the excess water when it's time.






We put two seeds in each depression, which are in the four corners of the pot. This way if one seed does not germinate another is there in that spot. Potentially, there could be eight seedlings in one pot.

Most of these seeds are new for this year, so we expect a high rate of germination, but two of types of pepper seed have been saved from previous years, so this method is probably more important for them. (I do keep the seeds refrigerated in a sealed opaque container to prolong their viability.

After the seeds have been planted, we add about a quarter inch of soil on top.

After all the seeds are planted, we cover the soil in the pots with another quarter inch of the sterile starter soil.

And then we are ready to start the daily shuttle of the seeds from the SW-facing garage window to the hot sidewalk just outside the garage. Yesterday and today, the weather is in the 80s! So the seedlings stay out in the hot sun, but earlier in the week when the highs were in the 50s, they stayed inside.

Here is the arrangement of what we've sowed. We use a very fine stream of water from our rain barrel hose to rewet the pots on the day we planted the seeds.

A week later and after the warm weather yesterday, we have sprouts! Both the Sunchocola cherry tomatoes and the Brandy boys are the first to sprout. Today's hot sun will probably entice more seedlings to emerge. I took this photo first thing this morning, but now these seedlings are much greener.

Oh the magical process of germinating seeds... It takes my breath away every time.

I hope you have started planning for your spring gardening.

* Read about my mostly composted arborist woodchips here: "A Requiem for a Hickory Tree" and here: "A compost turning = happy gardening in 2013!"

Read more about my rain barrels here: Climb up my Rain Barrels and there are links to the subsequent rain barrel articles.


Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Warm weather

It's been warm this week - unseasonably so.  And the weekend ahead is downright balmy for January.  I've been sitting on my hands in terms of vegetable garden planting, but I've been ordering seeds, woo-hoo!)

This weekend, I'm planning to free the woodland perennials of their winter overcoat of leaves (not necessarily a good thing when they're water oak), cut back the main perennial border, and get the satellite garden and main vegetable garden ready for early planting (I've already put in garlic, onion sets are on their way, and I've got perennial leeks to move around, as well).

No sign of deer lately, but I'm totally mindful that they could appear at any time and yum up anything that's not too herbal or spicy (hmm, I won't be planting lettuce or mild cole crops without some sort of barrier here in the Piedmont, that's for sure).

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Creasy greens

We had our first creasy greens (upland cress: Barbarea verna) today, a totally delicious green that's a winter and spring tradition in Appalachia. I bought the seeds from Sow True Seeds, a local Western North Carolina seed company, in Asheville, as a bit of a novelty.

A good friend of mine who grew up eating 'creasy greens' had primed my awareness of them, and I thought I'd give them a try.

The plants form low rosettes, and I'd kind of ignored the small patch through the fall (the hakurei turnips were MUCH larger and more robust as was all the arugula and kale - and both were easier to harvest), but being back in the mountains after winter break had me noticing how nice the leaves of the creasy greens looked (in spite of some hard freezes in the meantime).  They were glossy and green without any sign of frost damage.

Collecting a nice bunch of them to quickly stir-fry to have along with our breakfast omelet, I discovered that raw, they're quite peppery, but cooked -- yum!  They're totally delicious, with a texture of a tender kale, and very tasty.

Hmm, I'll be growing a lot more of these in the future (as winter crops, for sure!)

Here's a photo from another seed source, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

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Organizing plants

A call on the radio program today had me thinking.  We don't always edit our plantings enough. The caller was worrying about her view from her home office (it sounded pretty jumbled up).

Taking a clear view, printing out photos (b&w), thinking about what you actually SEE -- all are so helpful for transforming views in our landscapes.

It's not always about adding more plants, but editing them out, to be sure.

Isn't gardening fun?

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Even more seeds...

Hmm, I'm on a roll, even as the weather turned grey and rainy today.  I ordered more seeds this morning (unusual ones), along with some gratis ones from Renee's Seeds (I'd just placed a paid order yesterday, so I'm not feeling too guilty about accepting the media freebies).  They're (Renee's, that is) are the best!  I love her seed choices.

I'm itching to start seeds under lights and on a heating pad out in my garden shed, even though I KNOW it's way too early. I'll just content myself by cleaning up and tidying beds (from lots of winter annuals), until I can plant snow peas and sugar snap peas later this month (depending on soil temps).  But then I'll start some cool-season veggies for transplant!  I do need to barricade my Piedmont garden against deer, however -- they're probably still out there, waiting for the nice gardener to offer up something tasty.

It's been quite mild so far this winter, at least in the Piedmont, so I should be able to coax some hardy lettuce and spinach seeds to germinate with a bit of warmth first, before setting them out.  First, however, I'll be transplanting leek "babies" from my perennial leeks, which have produced lots of small offsets ready to move to new spots.

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