In case you missed them!
1. Growing Potatoes with Leaf Mulch
2. Steel Fence Tomato and Pea Cages
3. WinterSown.org
4. Indoor Winter Gardens using AeroGardens
5. Slow Cooker Chili with Jacob’s Cattle Beans
6. Food Not Lawns Cleveland Seed Swap – 1/26/2013
7. Sauteed Turnip Greens
8. The Great Indoor Tomato Experiment
9. Front Yard Herb Shade Garden
10. Top Ten Best Vegetable Crops to Grow in Northeastern Ohio
Good Luck and Happy Gardening!
Seven Top Turnips going to seed spring 2013
Mustard, kale, and turnips basically all go to seed the same way. When they get stressed (hot weather, etc) or are overwintered, these plants send up stalks and put out flowers. These flowers are beautiful and functional, as they bring beneficial insects to your garden. Once the stalks are produced (also called “bolting”), the leaves themselves become bitter as the plant puts its energy into getting busy (cue the Barry White music) reproducing.
The seed is ready to collect once the stalks turn brown and dry out. Unfortunately, the pods don’t all dry out at once, with the ones closer to the base of the plant going first. If you wait until they are completely ready, some seed will escape onto the ground and you’ll have babies starting before you know it. This is a good thing if you are trying to get a perennial supply of yummy greens. Not so good if you have plans for that area in the form of other crops. But, as I always say, edible weeds are better than inedible weeds.
The best system I’ve found so far to collect this type of seed is through the use of garden cutters and trash bags. Just snip below the pods and put the top into the bag. This way you can squish and crush up the pods in the bag and have the tiny little seeds fall to one corner. Cut the corner tip as small as you can and release the seed. You will get some chaff (fancy word of the day) but only some, not all.
If all goes right, you can put the separated seed into a holding vessel (like this glass jar pictured below). Once there, you can shake it to force the lighter chaff to the top for more removal. You could also use a screen to sift out the extra material.
Good luck and happy gardening!
January in Ohio is tough on the gardener as we have at least 2 months until working our outside gardens is feasible. But today on 1/4/2014, the Snarky Gardener had the opportunity to play in the dirt. I’d been soaking 4 rosemary cuttings and it was time to pot them up. Easy work as I just stuck the rooty ends into the small pots, poured the dirt in, and watered briefly. Luckily I had some starter soil and pots in the house so I didn’t have to make the treacherous trip out into the snow and cold to my storage shed. I’ll have to admit it was fun to get my hands dirty on this winter’s day. These starts are for my January swaps – the Countryside Conservancy food swap and the Food Not Lawns Cleveland seed swap on 1/25.
Another reason for my dirt play date is the box I received yesterday from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. I ordered a full set of soil blockers and wanted to see how they worked. I bought 2 blockers – one that produces 20 – 3/4″ square blocks and another that makes 4 -2″ X 2″ blocks. The really cool part is I added an Insert Set with “dibbles” to my order which will make 3/4″ square indentions on top of the 2″ X 2″ blocks. This way the smaller start blocks can be added later to bigger blocks as the seeds grow out. There was also an available single 4″ X 4″ blocker but it was a little out of my price range for now ($99 normally but just went on sale for $93.60 until March). As you can see by the picture above, I planted lavender, mint and sage. The mint and sage seeds are a few years old, so I’m dubious if they will germinate. But if they do, I’ll have more starts for my swaps 🙂
Saturday, January 25, 2014 – 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
13001 Cedar Rd, Cleveland Heights, OH
If you are interested in gardening, community, food security, permaculture, seed saving and sharing, this is the place for you! Bring seeds (purchased or saved) if you have them, or consider what you might swap for seeds in goods or service, but come anyway. We have a good collection and lots of information to share. This year, we have signed the Safe Seed Pledge and will not knowing share GMO/Monsanto owned seed.
Joining us will be: Elle Addams of City Rising Farm, Judi Strauss, of The Charmed Kitchen, with herbs, books and more for sample and sale, Chris McClellan, of Natural Cottage Project, will demonstrate a rocket stove, gardeners of the Grace Lutheran Community Garden, and many more.
Refreshments are potluck. Please bring a dish to share. Also, collecting non perishable food donation for Hts’ Emergency Food Bank. There will be a Freecycle table available to bring or take useful items. Residue will be donated.
If you bring saved seeds, please label them with as much pertinent info as possible. We will have envelopes and labels available. New this year: Seed Savers, who are willing, will be with their seeds at tables, to discuss traits, growing conditions, stories about them, and aspects of seed saving. Donated seed will be available and asked to be considered a “loan” to be returned, if possible, the fooling swap. The completed Saved Seed Inventory will be available for perusal, or check it out online at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhK_fFhk3xBNdFQxaHNGRF8zXzk1TU5DR2xzb0c1UXc&usp=sharing#gid=0
Freecycle info: Please bring gently used ( or new) items to donate/swap. If you have items left at the end of the day, take them home or leave them for donation pickup Monday morning.
This event is free (donations gratefully accepted), childfriendly, on a busline and handicapped accessible.
Volunteers are needed to help set up and clean up.
Please contact Mari Keating @ beanpie55@att.net for more information
and visit foodnotlawnscleveland@yahoogroups.com
Food Not Lawns, Cleveland Facebook group
http://www.meetup.com/Kent-Food-Not-Lawns/events/156126052/
The Snarky Gardener saw more progress on the indoor tomato front. Both plants reached the top of the fully extended AeroGarden hood (2 feet), so it’s just pruning from here on out. The Chocolate Cherry has 4 or 5 green tomatoes on it (yeah!). They are tiny but are a hopeful sign of things to come. The Snarky Orange has several flowers but has been running behind the other since the beginning.
On 12/22/2013, we had a Winter Solstice miracle with temperatures in the 60’s with just a little rain. This allowed the Snarky Gardener to check out his garden to see what had survived. The mustard was a dried out brown, as the previous week’s lows in the teens killed it off (as expected). Next year’s potato patch will appreciate the extra biomass, fumigation and sulfur the mustard will provide. What did survive was the purple top turnips and the corn salad (pictured above) plus onions, leeks, and thyme. I picked through the turnip greens to thin them out then covered the remainder with leaf mulch to protect them until mid-March (like I did earlier this fall for the spinach, rosemary, and peas). Leeks and thyme were also pulled before the weather turned nasty again the next day.
Even though I’ve been fall gardening the last few years, I’m always amazed at what survives through the cold. This winter has been early and often with plenty of ice and snow. But out in the garden the greenness and deliciousness continues. And March is just around the corner.
Alternative title: The Report of My Tomatoes’ Death was an Exaggeration
Other alternative title: It’s a Winter Solstice Miracle!
After a scare with droopy branches, my tomatoes continue to soldier on. It was a case of over-fertilizing and once I replaced the water, the two plants recovered with only some leaf damage. As you can see from the picture, the Chocolate Cherry on the right seems to be doing better, but it’s a more robust variety anyways. I probably should have removed the flowers from both to help with the recovery, but my quest for winter tomatoes overpowered my logic and common sense. The chocolate cherry tomato plant’s flowers are turning into little tomatoes (yum!). Now all that’s left is the waiting (and waiting and waiting).
The AeroGarden’s hood is a full mast (2 feet high) so now I’ll have to keep up with the pruning. I finally put in the trellis system, which is why they look like marionettes. The vines have been sucking up all the water I pour and then some. Most of the time, AeroGardens can go a week or 2 before you have to refill. These are so needy, but soooo worth it. Hopefully the next post will show fruit ready to pick.
The Snarky Gardener and the Snarky Girlfriend have been fortunate to have attended three Countryside Conservancy food swaps this year. A food swap is a gathering where people bring food they have grown and/or made with some local ingredients. Items are “bid on” through a silent sign up sheet per unique item. If you want something, you write your name down along with what you have to swap. Then, when the bidding is over, everybody swaps who wants to swap.
Here are some general rules to help your first food swap a success:
1. Read the rules first so you have an idea of what you are getting yourself in to.
2. Bring surplus from your garden and/or make something you’ve made before.
3. Google and Pinterest are your friends.
4. Label your produce with your name, contact information, ingredients, and storage instructions.
5. Know that you may be bringing some of your produce back home, so be willing to eat your own dog food (so to speak).
6. Speaking of which, you can make pet treats as well as people food.
7. Be ready to use your people skills as mingling and talking about yourself and your stuff will be expected.
8. Be open to what other people have. Trades are between 2 parties so if you are more accepting, you’ll get more trades.
9. Have a variety of products, though not too many. 3 unique offerings is probably a good number.
10. Packaging does matter. If it looks professional, people are more likely to want it.
Good luck and happy trading!
Gardening may seem like just a hobby to many people, but in fact growing food is one of the most radical things you can do: Those who control our food control our lives, and when we take that control back into our own hands, we empower ourselves toward autonomy, self-reliance, and true freedom.
Flores, Heather (2011-10-19). Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community (p. 2). Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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The Snarky Gardener’s entry into gardening came about accidentally with a previous landlord tilling a 10′ by 50′ swath in the goldenrod infested, brick clay hard, no-mans land behind my duplex. Having little idea what I was doing, I filled the freshly tilled ground with plants I saw my parents grow when I was young – tomatoes, beans, peas, corn, onions, carrots, turnips, eggplants, and others. Some did great (beans, onions, and peas), others mediocre (tomatoes, turnips), and others not at all (carrots didn’t even come up, corn was stunted, etc). But I had enough success to ask myself “Could I grow all my own food?” And for me, that question changed everything, though I’m still far from that goal.
I first heard about “Food Not Lawns” when I attended my first Food Not Lawns Cleveland meeting in January 2013. With my food gardening background, it resonated with me instantly, though I didn’t (and still don’t) consider food gardening “radical”. I wanted to find a group of like minded people to bond with, but organizations like gardening clubs didn’t seem to fit me. The idea of growing plants and flowers just for their looks seemed superficial to me. This group felt like my kind of people.
After recent discussions with Mari Keating, the fearless leader of Food Not Lawns Cleveland and rereading the book, I’ve decided to take the next step by starting “Kent Food Not Lawns“. The FNL movement is “hyper-local” meaning each group should have a limited mile radius influence. Since I’m 35 miles or so from the Cleveland group, creating a new one near me made sense (and keeps me from driving so much). My hope is to find other local gardeners who want to grow food and help others do the same.
Just when I thought things were going along peachy for my indoor tomatoes, this is what I found yesterday morning.
When I saw my plants in distress, I gave them more water and AeroGarden fertilizer. Later on during the day, I jumped on the “Internets” to see what might be the problem and found an article about overfertilization. If plants have too much, they cannot absorb water, which is what the saggy leaves reminded me of. So it looks like I caused the droopiness by using some homemade “Comfrey/Turnip plant juice” a few days ago. Either this liquid mixture was too strong or maybe the pH was too extreme (should probably check, huh?). And of course by adding even more fertilizer, I made everything worse (my overenthusiastic self did it again). So last night I replaced all the water in the AeroGarden with distilled only. I think this did the trick as they look a little better this morning, though we did lose some lower branches. I’ll post more pictures this weekend.