Spring ? ! ? !

It's spring! Things are already blooming.  And frankly they'e been going since march this year. 

No idea what this bush is, but it's one of the first things in my garden to go and the bees LOVE it.

Well I think it's pretty safe to say that spring has sprung for real at last, but man did mother nature pull a good april fool's joke on us.  I think this has been the strangest winter ever. Not really any snow, and if there was some it never stuck around for long.  The ground never really ever froze.  My backyard has seen much better says with the puppies playing on it all winter.  Trust me I'm totally over the muddy puppies.  At least now the grass is starting to finally fill in and will hopefully start limiting the mud coming in.  As if that all wasn't enough we were seeing Magnolia trees in almost full bloom in MARCH!  I have to say it made tax season a little nicer this year.  That is until mother nature decided to throw a wrench in the works. 

Magnolia Tree Pretty much full bloom in March

Bleeding Heart already way up and it was only March

Very happy that things are already coming up this year.  Looks like we may have lost a few plants even with the mild winter, but man do the roses seem like they've enjoyed the mild winter.  I've already got lots of leaves breaking out including new branches already.  Can't wait to see how the summer goes with them. 



And Mother Nature plays a trick on us. Guess Magnolias don't like it cold. Good thin there were still parts of the tree that hadn't bloomed yet. It's starting to look like spring again.



As tax season wraps up on Tuesday let the season begin. 

Thanksgiving 2011

I have to say that I absolutely love having an herb garden.  When we are cooking recipes that call for fresh herbs we usually have to buy a fairly large package at the store, or a fairly large bunch even at the market.  But what happens when you only need a few leaves? Typically that means that you’re buying the whole thing and unless you have a use for the remaining amount you end up throwing it away.  As we went to prepare our turkey we needed both rosemary and fresh sage (but only 6 leaves).  I was with pleasure that I ran outside to pick some fresh sage and walk over to my winter garden and clip some fresh rosemary. 

I couldn’t use my potatoes because they were rotting, but I’m hoping that in the coming years I will be able to pull more and more from my garden.  While herbs may be a simple start they are on the top of my list of ways to get a huge bang out of the garden.

Menu this year
Turkey brined with Alton John’s good eats brine
Loaded mashed potatoes
Baby peas (just for my dad)
Orange glazed carrots and snow peas
Sweet potato rosettes
Fresh baked dinner rolls (from stratch)
Stove top stuffing (my family loves it sorry)
Cesar Salad
Pumpkin roll with vanilla ice cream for dessert

Leftovers

Loaded mashed potato soup
Turkey casserole
Turkey stock
Turkey meat frozen for later

Potatoes 2011

I had started with potatoes leftover from the kitchen mostly just to play and see what would happen.  They were so fantastic that I really wanted to try to grow some.  And of course in true me fashion wanted to try the weird and unusual that of course (at least at that time for me ) can’t be found in the store.  So for my 2010 Garden I got some of the potato bags from Gardener’s Supply and some actual seed potatoes from a couple places.  Ended up trying Sweet potatoes, Yukon golds, Blue and fingerlings.  We got going VERY late because of the flooding in New England last year but decided to try them any way.  Boy were we glad that we did try them.  While we didn’t get a whole lot we got enough to try and enough to seed for 2011.  They were incredibly buttery by themselves and the blue had an awesome woody taste that I had never had before. 

So 2011 came and learning from last year I was able to keep enough for seed for the Yukon gold, blue and fingerlings, and we even managed to get them into the ground on time.  However, we weren’t able to get the bags back filled on time.  So while I was proud of myself for keeping my own ( I even started my sweet potatoes from an extra one I had) My results weren’t fantastic.  Between the 4 bags that we had going we only got about 8 pounds total.  No where near what we really should have in a perfect world, but better then last year.  All the potatoes were also all on the bottom of the bags.  I think if we had gotten it back filled we may have had better luck. 

The worse part about this year was we left them outside to dry and they all got rained on.  Dried them off and brought them, but unfortunately they did not make it.  This year we didn’t even get as far as trying them.  Now I’m really motivated to get it right next year.   At least this year was better than last year so we're heading in the right direction. 

My niece and my father grabbing the potatoes.  He's like a kid in a candy store. 

Well that's what we managed to pull out of the bags.  Not too bad.  Very excited about the sweet potatoes this year. Top Left blue, top right fingerlings (mine are really big), bottom right yukon gold (some really good ones), and finally sweet potatoes.  

These were our totals.  First year we actually weighed them.  the .16 was the bag we used. 

Winter Garden 2011

So we’re trying the winter garden thing again this year.  Crossing my fingers we get better luck.  Unfortunately we’re not off to a great start.  The tomatoes that I planted dried out and shriveled up into nothing.  The zucchini I planted didn’t do much before it decided it would rather die, and some of my seeds just didn’t sprout and I never made it back to reseed them. 

 Now for the good news, the Hot cherry, cayenne, chocolate, reg & mini chocolate peppers that I planted are doing great.  I have one volunteer tomato plant that is awesome and already has fruit on it.  I wanted to transplant some more plants from the garden, but after winter storm Alfred I don’t think most of what is left outside is very happy right now. 

For he ha’s because we really are switching to wood this year I’m going to try to reseed and see what happens.  I’m going with the idea that worse case is no worse than the current situation.  Maybe we’ll even get some strawberries this year.  I’ve got 4 pots of them set up as an experiment this winter to see what happens. 

I really need to keep in mind that this thing needs to be up and running by the beginning of august.  That’s when I put in the plants that are doing the best right now.  What can I say gardening is an experience that is always evolving. 

Finding homes for them

Finding homes for almost 70 plants inside is no easy task.  This year we plan on burning wood so I’ve lost the top of the wood stove which housed quite a few of my plants last year.  We’ve also expanded our winter garden this year.  We did however manage to get quite a few hooks put up so that I can finally hang plants in front of the windows this year.  That has helped tremendously.  Now it’s just finding the time to finish and keep up on the watering.  I’m finding that a lot of them are lot more thirsty now that they are inside then they were on the outside.  I think I have finally gotten catch up in the watering.  Now the trick is to stay on top of it.  I’ve managed to make the family room pretty cozy which is super nice.  It will be fun to sit around this winter surrounded by green fun. 

Top of the 6 ft table that is completely full

Floor of the table

There's a lot of them.  And for the most part they have all found homes.  I totally have a jungle in my house.  There's also a crazy variety of plants in this collection.  Never really appreciated how much I have until it's all crammed together in one tiny spot.  Some think it's crazy, but it's my craziness and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Pasta Ponza ! ! ! !

So I found a recipe from Everyday Italian that I loved the way it looked and wanted to try it.  The problem was that my grocery store doesn’t carry different colors of tomatoes.  Figuring they were out there I went on a search and ultimately found some very cool new seed places.  Last year I tried growing them and they didn’t quite do as well as I was hoping and we never got enough to really do anything with.  I did only have 1 plant of each.  I did the black, white, orange, and yellow cherries.  This year I got some black cherry seeds from a friend and tried the other colors again.  Well even with the damage from Irene I was able to finally get enough to try out the recipe. 

Totally worth it.  So excited to know that not only can I grow the different tomatoes, but they do taste way better than what’s in the stores and the selection is so much better.  The pasta dish was fantastic and super easy to put together.  I made it in my Demarle at Home products which made clean up a total breeze.  I think we ate it for about a week and I still wanted it.  Making me want to expand what I can do with what’s in my garden.  Which I guess is as good a reason as ever to really evaluate where I’m at.

Update: So knowing that this has sat for a while it's time to let everyone know that the new and improved can be found over at www.gardeningfoodies.com I've learned a lot over the years and I'm super excited to share that with everyone.  So come check us out and see what we now have in store for you.  A lot of food, a little bit of bon COOK business and a sprinkling of gardening to bring everything together.  Or just check out our growing community over at www.gardeningfoodies.com/fbgroup Can't wait to see you there and catch up.



Fresh Cherry Tomatoes from the garden before cooking



After cooking with bread crumbs on top







Finished Product

Finished Product

Time to start the jungle

It’s that time of year again.  Once we hit the middle of October as the temperatures decided to start dipping into the low 40’s we decided to grab all of our tropical plants and make sure they were inside.  I believe the forecast was for 38 degrees when we decided to grab everything.  With all the tax deadlines getting extended for those of us up in the northeast tax season hasn’t gone the way it usually has.  So instead of being able to concentrate on cleaning up at home I’ve been doing double duty still.  At least we had an extra table that we could use.  This meant that like Irene all the plants just got piled up so that at least they were inside before the supper cold actually hit. 

I’m so glad that I actually did bring them in because the lights frosts started and I’m pretty sure that most of my plants would not have liked that very much; especially seeing as how most of them have already gotten pretty mad at me for leaving them outside in the 50 degree weather.  Now comes the fun task of cleaning them all up, trimming them all back and fining a nice home for them for the winter. 

Welcome to the start of my jungle.