Winter Garden Planting

Last week (11/5/10) I planted 4 items in our second raised bed.  They were  "Red Creole P.R.R. Onions, Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Squirrel's Choice Olympia Hybrid Spinach, and Swiss Chard.  I was a little late doing this so I don't know what kind of yield I will get.  We'll wait and see.

Crimson Clover cover crop

I planted some Crimson Clover cover crop seeds in one of my raised beds a few days ago.  It is coming up quite nicely.  I will leave this bed unplanted through the winter in an attempt to replenish the nitrogen. 

Tomatoes- biggest is 10.8 oz

We are still getting tomatoes from our "Big Boy" plant.  These are the biggest we have gotten yet.  The plant should probably last another 2 or 3 weeks.  By that time, I will be sick of tomatos.

It's BLT Time

Picked our first good tomatoes this morning.  Biggest was 7.8 oz.  Plenty big enough for BLT's.

Zucchini Bread

Fresh out of the oven - Yum. Yum

Harvest Bounty

Early morning harvest today. However, we are still waiting for
tomatoes. We do get lots of cherry tomatoes.

Stuffed Zucchini

Leona made stuffed zucchini for dinner last night. Both the zucchini
and home grown cherry tomatoes were used. It's great to grow your own
food.

Zucchini Bread

Made 4 loaves this morning. This is how I like to eat my veggies.

More Cherry Tomatoes

We picked more cherry tomatoes this morning.  Leona is buying the ingredients to make salsa.  We won't be able to eat them all otherwise.

Zucchini all the time

We are being inundated with zucchini from our one plant.  We have eaten it steamed, stuffed, grilled, as zucchini bread, and now as zuccnini brownies.  Leona made brownies last night using a recipe found on Allrecipes.com.  It was "Cassie's Zucchini Brownies.  They were very good - not real sugary with only about 122 calories per serving. See  Cassies Zucchini Brownies

Cherry Tomatoes

We are starting to harvest our tomatoes.  The cherry tomato plant has hundreds of tomatoes.  We picked just these few yesterday and will be getting more every day.  Leona is getting ready to make Salsa.  We can't possibly eat all of them.

Harvesting

Leona picked a few things yesterday.  We are getting lots of yellow squash, zucchini , and some peaches, and a few strawberries.  We have made about 15 loaves of zucchini  bread for the freezer, have had steamed zucchini , and stuffed zucchini .  Basically, we have had zucchini coming out of our ears.  Now, we are waiting for tomatoes.  Our cherry tomato plant is loaded but nothing ripe yet. 

Hot Weather

Parts of my garden are doing much better now that the weather is warming up.  My tomato plants, zucchini, and squash are starting to look pretty good.  We are getting lots of zucchini.

SF Ferry Bldg Farmers Market

Leona and I went to the Farmers Market at the Ferry Bldg in San Francisco this past Saturday.  We like to look at all the nice vegetables, various foods to eat, and best of all, people watch.  Here are a couple of pictures of how I wish my vegetables looked after picking.  Unfortunately, mine look more like the previous post.

Blossom End Rot

I seem to have some blossom end rot on my yellow squash.  This picture shows one that looks pretty good and one that does not.  I am assuming this is a "Blossom End Rot" condition.  I know this problem can exist with tomatoes but I didn't know it also occurred on squash.  Please let me know if anyone knows what else could be causing this condition.

For quite some time, Leona has been looking for an economical purchase of a new backyard patio set.  Finally, she found one at Home Depot for only a couple of hundred dollars.  (Some of these sets run over $2000).  This is not necessarily a top of the line set, but it serves our needs quite well.

Status

Tomatoes and Zuchinni aren't looking too bad so far.  Starting to get lots of blooms on the tomatoes and plan to be eating yellow squash in a few days.

Green Bean Planting

I planted 2 rows of green beans this weekend.  They were Squirrel's Choice Blue Lake Bush Beans.  In 50 - 65 days, we plan on eating fresh green beans.  That's a few pole beans on this end of the picture.

Bark for Berm

This past week I hauled 2.5 yds of Medium Bark to spread over our backyard berm.  After getting the first load, I realized I should have gotten Small Bark.  The Medium actually looks like Large.  Oh, well, it will break down over time.  That's one good thing about working in the yard.  Time will eventually fix all mistakes.

Garden planting 5/30/10

Once again, we planted one row of three vegetables - Squirrel's Choice Chantenay Red Cored carrots, Champion radishes, and Detroit Dark Red Table beets.  We had previously planted an identical row of these same vegetables.  We hope to extend the harvest by planting at different times.

Firepot

While on our recent vacation in Texas, we had dinner with my nephew and after dinner we sat on the back porch and enjoyed watching the flames from their firepot.  It creates quite the ambiance when added to good conversation and a glass of vino.

We just had to have one.  We found this one at K-Mart.

New Planting

This past weekend, Leona and I purchased two more plants that we really like.  They were: Salvia microphylla "Hot Lips" -  An open growing shrubby perennial sage to about 3" tall bearing striking white flowers that are half hot red.  Color can change due to several factors, and be all white or all red.  Sun, average soils, little summer water.  Zone 7-24. Here is a picture of what they will look like full grown.

More Strawberries

Leona picked some more strawberries yesterday.  I am surprised that we are getting so many berries this year.  They sure tasted good with sliced almonds and non-fat kool whip.

Strawberries

We have been getting a few strawberries from the plants we planted last fall.  I'm surprised that the frost didn't kill them but they survived and are producing. 

The Earwig Wars

The earwigs have assaulted our garden with an army and a "take no prisoners" approach.  We decided to fight back with liquor.  Leona made this little trap with an empty koolwhip container and a Bud lite beer.  As she filled it, I heard her measuring out the dosage - "a little for the earwigs, a little for Mike".  As you can see it was effective in catching the earwigs.  We will continue the fight as long as the beer holds out.  I enjoyed the battle as well.

Strawberry and Spinach Salad

Leona uses this recipe from Allrecipes.com to make an excellent strawberry and spinach salad.  We have just enough strawberries to pull this off.  It is a great salad.

Ingredients (for two servings)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1-1/2 teaspoons poppy seeds
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1-1/2 teaspoons minced onion
5 ounces fresh spinach - rinsed, dried and torn into bite-size pieces
2 cups strawberries - cleaned, hulled and sliced
2 tablespoons almonds, blanched and slivered

Directions

This recipe's Ingredients were scaled to yield a new amount. The directions below still refer to the original recipe yield of 4 servings.

1.In a medium bowl, whisk together the sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sugar, olive oil, vinegar, paprika, Worcestershire sauce and onion. Cover, and chill for one hour.

2.In a large bowl, combine the spinach, strawberries and almonds. Pour dressing over salad, and toss. Refrigerate 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

Nutritional Information

Amount Per Serving Calories: 491
Total Fat: 35.2g
Cholesterol: 0mg

Lawnmower Maintenance 051410

I performed a little lawnmower maintenance today.  Changed the oil and sharpened the blade.  The lawn will now receive a more even and less jagged cut.  Being the procastinator that I am, I have been putting these two chores off for awhile. 

Spring Planting 050710

We returned home from vacation to find that earwigs had eaten our Zuchinni, Yellow Squash, and Cucumber plants.  So, off we go to Green Acres Nursery to purchase more plants.  We replanted Zuchinni, Yellow Crookneck Squash, and a Spartan Valor Cucumber.  We also put out some earwig bait around the gardening beds.  In the other raised bed we planted one row of three vegetables - Squirrel's Choice Chantenay Red Cored carrots, Champion radishes, and Detroit Dark Red Table beets.  In about two weeks we will plant another row of these same veggies.  We hope to extend the time with which to enjoy home grown salads.  We also planted a small amount of Squirrel's Choice Blue lake pole beans - just enough to grow on the trellis that I made last year.  (See pictures previously posted)

We have recently been enjoying both peas and spinach from our winter garden  Last night we had an excellent meal of new peas, sauteed spinach, baked cod, and baked sweet potato.  Yum, Yum ! It is great fun to eat home grown food. 

April 10 Planting - Con't

Three new plants for our flower garden - Scotch Broom, Peony, and Vinca Minor ground cover for the berm.

April 10 Planting

We planted our first garden bed this weekend.  We planted

three tomato plants - Big Beef, Early Girl, and Red Cherry.

We also added in one Zucchini plant and one Gold Rush

Summer Squash.  We didn't have very good luck last year

because we didn't fertilize enough.  I will not  make that

mistake this year.  If nothing else, I will kill them with kindness.
We needed to get this planting done this weekend because we

are leaving on vacation this coming Friday - gone for three

weeks

4/8/10

Hello to all of you gardeners out there.  We want to share with you our successes and failures (we seem to have more of these) with our vegetable garden.  This will be our second season at this home.  But- we weren't blogging last year.  However, we will post a few pictures of last season so you can see what we had. 
So, here we go.

Here are a few pictures from last year.  I built these raised beds from 2 x 12 Redwood.  They are 4 ft x 8 ft. in size and we used Mushroom compost (basically horse/cow manure) for the beds.

Winter Swiss Chard

Winter Onions

Zuchinni and Pole Beans

Tomato Plants, Pepper Plant, and Beets