Seed starting: Brussels sprouts

Today,  I started 24 Brussels sprouts seeds. They are hanging out on the seed heating mat.

Tweet

Garden haul

This is only part of this week's haul. I still need to finish picking the other row of green beans/ yellow wax beans. And more peppers and tomatoes. 

We ate green beans one night at dinner, and I need to figure out how to preserve the rest of these. There aren't really enough to can, so I may blanch and freeze them. 

I wanted to try something new with the tomatoes (this has been a year of having plenty of produce so that I CAN try something new! usually I barely have enough produce to do what I need - tomato juice and crushed tomatoes for chili/soup/etc.) I made tomato jam from the book Food In Jars. You simmer tomatoes with sugar, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, fresh ginger, lime juice and cloves until it thickens almost to a paste, you know, so it is jam-like. It is really tasty (but is has a funny aftertaste which maybe is because I used bottled lime juice instead of fresh lime juice??). The recipe says it is good with a cheese platter. I'm thinking corn bread slathered in cream cheese and tomato jam. Or mixing the jam with cream cheese or chevre to make a dip. 

After I harvest today, I'll probably can more crushed tomatoes or tomato juice. 

Last weekend, Baker Creek had free shipping, so I ordered garlic for fall planting, spinach and culantro (not a misspelling - the Vietnamese version of cilantro). The spinach, culantro and a free packet of red romaine arrived late this week and the garlic will ship in September. Now I need to figure out where to plant it!

Tweet

Shades of Green

The garden is looking great - the cow manure really helped it this year. The hardest part is keeping on top of the weeds. Which aren't too bad in the areas where I mulched with straw. The areas without straw mulch are impossible to access for at least a week after it rains, but also have a lot more grass/weeds growing in them. Especially a lot of these prickly weeds that grow in the cow pasture that hurt to pull and hurt to step on barefoot. Unless you find them when they are really little and they don't have the pricklies on them yet... 

View of the whole garden

Left to right, foreground (background): beans (corn), eggplant, kale, carrots (acorn and summer squash), beans (onions, shallots, spinach and lettuce mix, beets), corn and cucumbers(potatoes and cauliflower)

The Illini corn is not growing; I need to replant corn in that area. The lettuces are starting to bolt, so we won't be able to eat them much longer. The beets really didn't do well; hardly any of them germinated. And they were fresh seed. I think next year I'll buy from Baker Creek because I've always had good luck with their beets and lettuces. The potatoes are flowering. The beetles are finally leaving the beans alone enough that they can grow.

Tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, all interplanted with herbs and walking onions

There are tons of tomatoes set on, and a lot of the tomatoes and peppers are blooming! I've been using the cilantro in dinners lately. Looking forward to caprese salads with all those tomatoes and basil.

Romas

Red Zebra

Yellow Pear

Tomatillos

Concord Grapes

Bruce Plums - I ate some before I took the photo. These are small plums, maybe 3/4 the size of an apricot. Sweet and tart at the same time.

Tweet

Garden Journal

I'm 28 weeks pregnant, but I'm trying not to let it slow me down!

Today, I planted eggplant (2 from the farm), and about a dozen blackberry plants. Of the ones I transplanted last year, only 4 or 5 survived (jury is still out on the 5th one; it had green leaves last week but they're shriveled now...). I also mulched around all the blackberries, the cherry bushes, and started mulching the grapes. Then I ran out of mulch. I have a couple more grapes and the blueberries to mulch still.
I tried to weed in the garden, but we got rain this week and even though I could walk in the garden in the straw mulch aisles, when I pulled weeds they came up with huge chunks of mud. So I'll wait a couple days and try again.
A lot of the tomatoes are blooming, there is at least one tomatillo set on, and a lot of the peppers are setting on blossoms. There are also blooms on some of the potatoes.
The Golden Bantam corn and the green beans I planted last weekend have sprouted. The Illini corn is slower, and there's only one visible sprout in the entire area I planted.

A couple more garden projects in the near future:
Installing t-posts and wire for the grapes. Translation: the Hubs has some posts to drive...
I also am going to try to re-plant the Early Golden Apricot and North Star Cherry. This will be the third cherry tree. All three trees were from a local nursery, but the rest of the trees were from big box stores and have not needed replaced. I hate to support big box stores, but when I have to replace the trees so many times, it's not worth my time.
And, I also need to replace a couple raspberries. I purchased four on clearance last fall and two of the four have survived. We'll see if the store will replace them; they have a one year warranty on plants, but I'm not sure they honor that on clearance plants...
Figure out stakes or more cages for the remaining tomatoes. Cages are expensive, but the best option.

Tweet