Coming Along

All of our gardens are really starting to take off. It's fun to see the brown soil mature into lush green vegetation throughout the season. Here are some pole beans starting to climb a bamboo and chicken wire structure Cam built:

On the left are tomatillos and the right is strawberry popcorn.

One of the 3 beds of tomatoes. I can tell that the plant on the front right is Silvery Fir but I don't know about the others. We need to work on a better labeling system in the seeding phase.

This bed has 8 Green Sausage tomato plants! We've never grown Green Sausage variety before. I sure hope we like them...

And the third bed most likely has Arkansas Traveler and Black from Tula.

Bell peppers:

Our garlic has scapes that we need to snip. I understand that we can use the scapes in our cooking (or un-cooking) for a nice mild garlic flavor. I've had them cooked before but never raw so that might be a fun experiment. I imagine a nice raw scape cracker...

This is our root veggie bed. From left to right: carrots, potatoes, onions and radishes.

Lettuce Galore

Every year we grow lettuce galore. We love lettuce. It's wonderful. This year we made it even more convenient by growing it in a raised bed right outside our kitchen door. It doesn't get any more convenient than that - aside from growing it in the kitchen!!

So why is it that we always end up with way more lettuce than we use? Is it because we don't eat as much as we should? Is it because we're too lazy to take 3 steps outside, pick some, wash it and prepare it? Is it because we have so many beautiful, delicious varieties we just can't choose?

I'm banking on the first two. We just don't eat as much lettuce as we should. When we should be creating fabulous home-grown salads we reach for whatever is in arms reach. So now I'm struggling to find ways that we can use this amazing lettuce before it ends up destined for the compost!! I'm thinking green smoothies and of course, more salads!!

Raw Strawberry Pie!

We've had plenty of fresh strawberries from our little patch and Adi suggested the other day that we make some strawberry pies! I thought that was a fabulous idea, and even better, why not make it raw!! So I already had some date/nut balls on hand - all ingredients are raw:

Date/Nut Balls

1 cup soaked hazelnuts (or whatever kind you like - soaked overnight and rinsed)
7 dates
1 tsp agave nectar
pinch salt
dried coconut flakes

Process dates and nuts in food processor, add agave and pinch of salt. Shape 'dough' into balls and roll in coconut flakes.

Adi likes Strawberry Shortcake so I used her cupcake liners placed in a cupcake tin and pressed one nut/date ball in the bottom of each one to create a crust.

Next:

Divide sliced strawberries among the cupcake liners and add agar agar syrup ---

Agar Agar Syrup

• 1/4 cup hot water (not boiling)
• 1 tsp agar agar powder (agar agar is like gelatin but made from seaweed and is not 100% raw but a great vegan substitute for recipes needing a bit of form)
• 2 Tbsp agave nectar

Chill in the refrigerator until set and enjoy! We did :)

Compost It!

When we moved into this house almost 4 years ago we had a move in bonus of a ready built compost bin in the corner of our yard. We were pretty excited about it until the previous owners let it be known to us that they had for some number of years thrown their guinea pig's soiled wood chips in there. I wasn't so sure what that would mean for growing veggies - I've heard of horse poo being mixed with saw dust to create an "organic" fertilizer but didn't really know how I felt about guinea pig poo being in my garden. We decided that existing compost bin would be used to compost leaves and weeds and we purchased this compost tumbler for faster composting results for our garden made from our kitchen scraps:I have to admit that using our composter gives me a profound sense of freedom in many different ways:

1. NOTHING from our vegetarian kitchen is EVER wasted!
2. The food that isn't used to nourish our bodies from our home ends up nourishing our soil :)
3. Our garbage output is significantly reduced by recycling our food "waste".
4. We don't have to buy any kind of fertilizer because we make it ourselves.
5. Composting makes us feel green and feeling green makes us happy :D
   

Rain Barrels

We currently have two rain barrels which we use almost exclusively to water our planters, baskets, and gardens throughout the growing season. This year has been exceptional as rainfall has been so overabundant to the point of catastrophic flooding in our community and many others in Iowa. So at this point, Cam has moved the downspout away from the barrels since haven't yet figured out an overflow system.

Each barrel has a valve near the bottom to hook up a hose (we are using a dual output extension so we can have a hose hooked up all the time and also get water directly from the other spout for watering cans, etc.) Rather than allowing the water to simply spill over the top and go where ever it will, we want to come up with an overflow system which we can control the direction of the water using a hose or tubing...

So What Are We Growing?

Many friends and family have asked us, "so what are you growing this year?" Well, a lot! Here's a list from memory(so I may have missed a few things):

Trees/Bushes

Walnut
Mulberry
Cherry (still needs to be planted)
Blueberry (still needs to be planted)

Perennials

Strawberries
Grapes
Raspberries
Asparagus (still needs to be planted)

Annuals/Veggies

Tomatoes (3 4x8 beds full - green sausage, black from Tula, Arkansas traveler, silvery fern, cherry and maybe others that I can't remember )
Strawberry Popcorn (the kernels are red)
Tomatillos (those green Mexican tomatoes)
Peppers (bell & jalapeno)
Carrots
Potatoes
Radishes
Onions
Green/String/Pole/Bush Beans
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Cabbage
Broccoli
Garlic
Quinoa
Spinach
Lettuce
Watermelon
Cantaloupe

Herbs

Sage
Dill
Basil
Lavender
Thyme

That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure Cam has started some other seeds that I haven't seen yet. This season is a bit weird with the weather staying cool so late into the spring and all of the crazy rain/flooding we've been seeing (especially this week). We're expecting flood waters to rise above the levels of the 1993 flood so a lot of farms, not to mention homes and businesses are either flooded or in danger of flooding this week. Ugh, makes me so glad we live where we do and that we are gardening in raised beds so our plants have the advantage of somewhat better drainage!

Here's a flood photo - you can see City Park under water behind the Iowa City sign.

Go to http://www.press-citizen.com/ to see more...

Raised Bed Gardens

In the beginning, we faced a challenge in our yard - OK, several challenges but on of the biggest being that our back yard is not flat but sloped. This is nice for a variety of reasons, but when it comes to gardening, we felt a real need to do so on a level surface. Our solution was to terrace the slope using raised garden beds.

Another challenge is the big walnut tree in the middle of the yard creating shade and causing trouble with tomatoes (a natural chemical that the roots of walnut trees give off causes blithe in tomato plants which is no good at all!) Planting the tomatoes in fresh soil in raised beds should help us avoid the blithe issue, but shade remains... we just deal with it - the tree does, after all, provide lots of wild fun by supporting our daughter's tire swing.

We added a total of six new raised beds this year. I would have liked more but we're trying to take things slow and not spend all of our cash in one project. Holding off on the additional beds allowed us to purchase a cherry tree and 3 blueberry bushes which we have yet to plant.

We (mostly I) love the feeling of organization that the raised beds provide. Having a visually appealing property is really important to me, but I want it to be functional as well. For us, raised beds are the best of both worlds and we're absolutely loving them so far!!

April Showers Bring May...

First Signs of Spring

I managed to snap a quick shot of some forsythia before all of the bright yellow flowers were gone. Daffodils are one of the earliest signs of spring...

And magnolias!

Lots and lots of magnolias.

Catching Up

I've posted several slide shows on my other blog which feel like they need to be here as well... so please forgive the duplicates for those who read both blogs...

Spring Seeding