More seedlings!

It's been a busy week in the seedlings-gardening department!

The last of the seedlings are starting to come up. I'm going to plug the Incredible Seed Company (incredibleseeds.ca) again because all of them are at a 100% germination rate! Not only that, but the seedlings look incredibly vigorous. Overnight they went from barely peeking, to being 2 inches tall, with fully spread first leaves. Craziness.

I hope they stay that healthy, because I'm beginning to worry about my tomatoes. Not that they're looking unhealthy, quite the opposite! I replanted all the tall and gangly-looking seedlings this morning to get them deeper into the pots. A few had very thick root balls, even beginning to be a bit root-bound. Hopefully I've averted a crisis by unpotting them, then planting them deeper in the same pots. I don't have anymore room under lights for bigger pots (except for the very biggest plant) and it's still much too cold outside. Needless to say my fingers are crossed for a very warm spring! Next year I'll plant them later.

Oh well, the good news is that it's only about half the tomato plants that have just taken off, the rest are growing at a more normal rate. I think I figured out why - the timer those lights were on wasn't set to 'timer', so the lights were on 24/7! Now that I've got them back on a more regular schedule I'm hoping they'll settle down a bit.

I'm also beginning to plan ahead for a bigger tomato crop this year. (Although since last year's 'crop' consisted of one big tomato and enough cherry tomatoes I could eat one a day for about 2 weeks that shouldn't be tough, lol). I think the big difference will be determinate vs indeterminate, and where i'm planning on planting them.

I've got plans to get a big load of rotted manure to finally (fingers crossed!) make my front bed an actual viable planting location. Since it's about the perfect place for tomatoes - other than the currently abysmal soil condition - I'm hoping things will do better this year.

In outside garden news there's a few good signs. The rhubarb that I've sadly mistreated the past few years (moving it twice in one year, the year after I transplanted a beat up rootball may have been a bit much) but it's up and looking more vigorous than ever. I'm debating putting a bucket over top of it, to see if I can force some nice big sweet stalks, but I may just leave it to grow this year. I am regretting building out catio (cat-patio) around it though...I wanted that extra foot for the cats to play in, and I didn't want to move the sad rhubarb for a THIRD time...but it'll be awfully awkward to protect it from the cats and then try to harvest it in a 4 foot high enclosure. Picture me constantly battling cats, hitting my head, and wielding a knife. Hmmm....If it does well this year maybe I'll split it and replant half in an easier to harvest location. I'll leave some to grow big for the kitty boys as a great bit of shade.

I've also been given hope by a few little bits of hopeful green. My chives, the ones that have never really taken off, are sprouting! This is the first year they've come up anywhere near this early, and I think they've already got more shoots this year than they had all last summer! Sure, they're small shoots right now, but they're there and that gives me hope for a great chive-season :)

I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't kill the asparagus though. I got a few plants for free (a 'come dig me up' ad on kijiji) and planted them in a sunny spot in the front yard. No shoots yet. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed, but I thought they were supposed to come up nice and early? I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Last thing, I promise ;) its nice and sunny, my cloche is up, I've got black landscape fabric warming another strip of ground...I'm planting today! I'll be putting in radishes, spinach, and Swiss chard. Yay! :D

Overall...I'm SO ready for spring to get here!

Pics:
Green things!

The abused rhubarb

Cloched and covered rows

Sprouts

Seedlings

Jitxu helping with the cloche

Kitty prints - a definite sign of spring

Inspiration comes from predictable places

Tonight, as I flip through my possibly overdue library book (having no fines is seductive), im madly scribbling down recipe after recipe and working hard to convince myself I don't need a trip to the store and 3-4 hours of prep and canning. Its a hard sell.

Something about spring makes me want to DO things. Not useful things like cleaning my messy house, or...mostly that really, but outside things or cooking. I want to feel useful, get dirty, and enjoy the - literal - fruits of my labour.

I've spent the past few weeks feeling cheaply and healing as slowly as seems possible...but tonight I want to ignore my twinging thigh, aching ankle, and unsteady balance and get something done.

With that in mind I got out the library book that has had to wait until I could sit up long enough to take notes and got dinner on.

The smell of something yummy on helps my note taking skills...or something. I'm not picky, I'll take my motivation as it comes.

So, no gardening, but a recipe for yummy easy no-stove chicken. YMMV ;)

1 chopped up chicken (thighs, legs, wings, breasts - reserve carcass for pet food or stock)
1/2 an onion, rough chopped
3 stalks celery, rough chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed (lazily)
Chicken stock 2 cups ish (enough to cover the chicken prices in your Dutch oven or pot)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup preserve of your choice (I used grapefruit marmalade)

Cook onion, celery and garlic until they start to soften. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put in chicken peices, pour on preserves, cover with broth and lid. Cook on med 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes and season as you like. Cook another 30 minutes or until cooked through.

Serve over rice.

I also have gotten my starter going again, finally...although with our oven broken its not working too hard.

Dont keep your starter next to hot pots, jyst so you know. Mine was there long enough for the pic and that's it.

Happy cooking and gardening :)

Makin stuff

Note: this is what I get for blogging from my phone! I thought this had been published weeks ago. Oh well, I guess today will be a two-fer.

As an update (and giveaway of how long ago this SHOULD have gone up) both pickles and mustard became edible this week and are AMAZING. We're half way through the jalapeno-dill jar already.

If I make them again...ok, ok. WHEN I make them again, I'll either use more jalapenos or let them sit longer. They've got great flavor but very little heat, after the last jar they're quite different. Due to being the last jar opened they had been marinating for an extra 3 months or so. Those things had kick!

Anyways, I highly recommend both recipes. Yum!

 Enjoy ;)

No gardening update tonight I'm afraid...I've got some pretty big changes coming though so get ready for that next week.

Tonight I did something easy, satisfying, and delicious...in a while.

In both cases it's the second time I've made the recipe, and I tweaked a few things. We shall see how the difference translates to the finished product.

Mustard
A few months ago I stumbled across an article talking about how easy it was to make mustard. I'm all about easy, and since its also much cheaper AND tastier its a win all around.

I went and bought three kinds of mustard seeds; yellow, black and red. I got quite a bit, mostly because the spice market only had fairly large quantities, but I paid less than $20 for enough mustard seeds to easily last the two of us at least a year. Compare that to fancy artisan mustard from the store at $6-8 per tiny jar...yeah. Homemade wins.

I don't even know if I can even call this a recipe...

1 cup mustard seeds (I do a mix, 2/3 cup yellow, 1/3 cup mixed red and black)
1 cup vinegar (I'm using apple cider vinegar this time)
1/2 cup water

Mix everything together in a jar and let it sit, covered, on the counter 24-48 hours.
Blend it (I use my immersion blender, but a normal one would work too)
Add salt to taste.

Seriously easy. And SO good! The trick is that once its blended you leave it to sit on the counter a few more days. Taste it every day and when it's mellowed enough for you put it in the fridge. Last time it took about a week or so for it to mellow enough for me.

We've been putting it on everything and it's way better than store bought.

Pickles
This recipe is for fridge pickles. I tried it for the first time in August last year, because I wanted to make pickles and without a pressure cooker I was limited to fridge pickles...they turned out amazingly and didn't last nearly long enough.

When I saw local mini cukes on sale at the store I knew I'd found a solution to my craving...a long term solution.

This is another crazy easy recipe, but it requires more patience than the mustard recipe.

10 cups water
2 heads garlic
5 cups vinegar
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp pickling (coarse) salt
1 Tbsp each of: yellow mustard seeds, black peppercorns, dill seeds
Fresh dill sprigs

Boil water and peeled garlic 5 minutes
Add vinegar and salt, boil to dissolve salt
Wash 2 lbs cucumbers and halve or quarter lengthwise if desired
Using sanitized jars, divide the whole spices evenly between your jars, then divide the garlic into the jars. (I add a bit of fresh dill to the bottom of the jars to)
Put cucumbers into the jars, pack tightly
Coil a sprig of dill into the top of each jar, using it to wedge the cukes in tightly to prevent floating
Ladle in the brine to cover everything
Optional: add 2-3 slices of jalapeno pepper...dill, jalapeno and garlic pickles are AWESOME, which I know due to experimenting with the first batch.

Cover the jar tops with clean cloths, securing them with elastic, and let sit on the counter 3 days. Refrigerate 3 weeks...eat them all in one day ;)

One of the best things about fridge pickles is once you've eaten all the pickles you can reuse the brine with whatever veggies you want. Awesome.

Enjoy your delicious home made condiments! :)

More planting and a problem solved

I finally got around to planting the last of my starts last night, which means we're finally getting closer to spring! I'm so excited to get out there and plant things, even more now because I've found a solution to the 'no more lawn killing' problem.

This winter I made a deal that I wouldn't replace any more of our lawn with food-plant-things; and then spent a while trying to figure out how to expand my planting and garden space, without eating more lawn.

I came up with two possible solutions - a large window box in the front under our big picture window, and a community garden plot. I can't build the planter until the soil in the front thaws a bit more, but I did hear back about the garden plot and I got one :)

So as I'm busy planning what to put in the community plot and what I should keep in my home plot. I'll probably put lower-maintenance things in the plot and well used and more delicate things at home. We'll see how it goes.

Anyways, on to the update!

I saw a bunch of videos on youtube that suggested planting 2 seeds in one cell for squash and other gourds. Then to plant them together, I guess then each plant grows in a different directions and you get more production. So I decided to give it a go and planted all my gourds and the cucumbers that way.

I planted 2 pots of:

-National Pickling Cucumbers
-Costa Romanesco zucchini
-Spaghetti Squash
-Golden Hubbard Squash
-Patty Pan Squash
-Small Sugar Pumpkins
-Butternut Squash

I also planted two kinds of cilantro.

The other seedlings are doing pretty well too, especially the cherry tomatoes. I've got a mix of sizes for the Bloody Butcher tomatoes, but about 6 that look really great. The Krims are a little smaller, but look nice and healthy anyways. I had to give them a bit of fertilizer last week, the leaves and stems started looking a bit purple and after some searching that was caused by a need for fertilizer. They do seem to be greening up a bit more anyways.

The peppers are generally slower than the tomatoes, but I've got two great looking jalapeno plants. The bell peppers seem to be slow, I might try to find a way to warm them up a bit...ditto the habneros.

Two of the eggplants look pretty good, and so do the 2 celery tarts that have made it this far. All of those are pretty small though.

Here's some pics of what's going on:

The new starts
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111516_zpsecf9c64d.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111516_zpsecf9c64d.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Forest of tomatoes
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111339_zps71d8562b.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111339_zps71d8562b.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Some strange leaves
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111350_zps1432650f.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111350_zps1432650f.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111412_zps9113a48d.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111412_zps9113a48d.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Happy jalapenos
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111402_zpsed483bc7.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111402_zpsed483bc7.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

The smaller starts
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111417_zps056169a0.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111417_zps056169a0.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Eggplants!
[URL=http://s131.photobucket.com/user/librarychick77/media/20140420_111355_zps3eab37f8.jpg.html][IMG]http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/librarychick77/20140420_111355_zps3eab37f8.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Well, that's it for now :) Happy gardening!

Seed Starting - Update

It's been getting warmer here, MUCH warmer. All the snow in front of our house has melted, but there's still a depressing amount in the back yard on top of my garden. I did get my first peek at the dirt of the garden yesterday though. I feel a bit silly, but I was so happy to see that little bit of rich black earth.

I noticed something about the seedlings that I think is a bit strange and I can't quite explain. It's something I read about on another blog (Lights In My Basement) and thought to myself "No way. There's no reason that would happen...right?" Yeah. Turns out my gut instinct was way off on this one.

I started all my tomatoes at the same time. The same day, planted them all in one go.

They germinated quickly, and grew well. I noted in my last post that the Bloody Butcher seeds germinated the best, but the Cherry tomatoes were the hardiest looking, and that I had up-potted a few of each variety. Admittedly, at the time I did pick the strongest looking starts...but I don't know that that can entirely be the cause of what happened after I up-potted some.

The plants I moved into bigger pots are now easily double the size of the others...easily. They look stronger and healthier, have thick leaves, and lots of little hairs on the main stems. The starts that had to sit in the tiny cells stayed much smaller. I thought maybe it was because they had less room to root, but I up-potted another bunch of them the other day and their roots weren't more than one little tap root and a few off shoots. They weren't anywhere near reaching the edges of the pots.

Basically I have no idea why...but it does make me consider planting the next bunch of starts (the gourds, cucumber, zucchini, ect) right into my bigger pots (which may or may not be cheap white plastic cups...*cough* If I reuse them it's environmentally friendly, right?).

I have been bottom-watering all the starts as much as possible, the exception being anything very tiny or just repotted.

Despite the wild success of the tomato starts I'm equally thrilled with the other plants I've got going so far. The peppers, bell and jalapeno, are coming along nicely, and three of the 4 habanero seeds came up. I even up-potted the best looking of the habanero starts. I'll probably up-pot one more and then either offer the others to friends or toss them.

I'm really excited about the celery starts. they're still tiny tiny tiny...If I do them again next year I'll plant them MUCH earlier as I don't know if they'll be ready to transplant into the garden by the time the garden is ready for them. I have three and they're all doing pretty good. One is noticeably bigger than the other two, so we'll see how they all progress. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

The last thing I'll add is the salad mix is doing OK. I'm not crazy about it, I thought they would be growing better, but they're turning a bit leggy. I may end up just buying lettuce starts.. :( I'm not giving up on them yet and I'll definitely be doing an early planting straight into the garden as soon as I can work with it. I didn't have much luck with that last year, but maybe I'll try and cloche them to give them a bit of a boost.

Until next time ;)

Pictures to come - Post written April 10, 2014 (I should do another update pretty soon, and I've dawdled on this one long enough I thought I should date it for an accurate timeline ;) )