March 2013 Harvest Day

Today’s harvest (for March Harvest Day):
Dinosaur Kale
Flat Leaf Parsley
Green Onion
Red Russian Kale
Red Giant Mustard
Blend of Colors Carrots
Walla Walla Onion

Today's harvest (for March Harvest Day)

It’s been a long time since I harvested Carrots. They took a long time to grow and there wasn’t many, but you don’t find much white and yellow Carrots at the grocery.

Harvested Carrots

I want to grow more of the non-orange ones, especially the purple ones.

Chopped Carrots

I made a Pizza (or Tart) using only vegetables that I harvested…

Pizza/Tart

and had so much vegetables left over that I made, so I also made a Veggie Frittata.

Veggie Frittata

Busy Gardening Day…

It was a busy gardening day. I started by planting a few Green Onions bottoms with the others I planted last week.

Planting Green Onion Bottoms

I start grafting onto our two Asian Plum trees:
Bubblegum Plum (which I’m really interested in tasting, so I grafted it in two locations)
Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’

People Watcher

This bird kept watching me as I was grafting scions onto our Plum tree. I thought it would fly away if I moved, but even after I walked around and climbed the ladder, it just stayed there. It eventually flew away.

I wanted to graft some Cherry scions, but I couldn’t find any good sites to graft onto… So I left it, and I’ll check our Cherry tree later.

Planting Swiss Chard, Beets and Mesclun

I had some plant that have been in cell packs since the fall, and they are still alive, so I planted the Swiss Chard into 5 gallon fabric pot and Beets ‘Chioggia’ into a large Daiso pot. I had two leftover Flat Leaf Parsley which I planted into a 3 inch pot for now, until i find a permanent place for them in the garden. Hopefully, these plants will grow big despite being left in their cell packs.

I also did a bunch of seed sowing. I sowed all of the Zesty Salad Mesclun Mix into a medium Daiso pot. I don’t think these grew well in the past and I just wanted to get rid of the seeds.

Sowing Spring Greens/Flowers

I planted the rest into cell packs:
Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearls’
Agrostemma ‘Milas’
Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
Bok Choy ‘Purple Choy’
Kohlrabi ‘Early White Vienna’
Bok Choy ‘Summer Boy’

Kiwi Leafing Out

A couple of the Kiwi plants have started to leaf out. I was worried that they died in the winter at their new location, but they seem to have pulled through. They was a couple dead/dried out branches which I trimmed. The rest of the blue bin where they were was empty, so I decided to plant a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas.

Sowing Sugar Snap Peas

Afterwards, I did a major trim of the European Plum tree in back of our storage. There were tons of dead limbs and limbs that sagged down. I tried to clear the bottom so we had walking space and just get rid of too much of the mass. I think it looks better now and hopoefully will grow better. Unfortunately, the Kirke Blue Plum that I grafted to it dried up.

Garden Maintenance + Salad Harvest + Spinach and Garlic Planting…

It was a really nice day today and I got to do some gardening and maintenance in my front yard veggie garden.

If you didn’t know yet, I’m concentrating most of my vegetable planting in fabric pots (GeoPots, Dirt Pots, Smart Pots, etc.) in our front yard. I experimented late last year with a few GeoPots and the veggies grew really well… some, a lot better than the ones in the back yard Square Foot Garden. I think it’s because there is full sun in our front yard, whereas our back yard gets a lots of partial sun.

Almost all of the Flowering Kale and some of the Mizuna and Mustard were infested with gray Aphids (yuck), so I pulled those plants out, since they were not doing well. Two pots with the Curly Leaf Kale looks really healthy and are starting to get bigger, but I noticed that the young leaves in the center also had the gray Aphids! So I got a pump sprayer filled with just plain water and blasted the Aphids out. I’ll check the Kale in a few days and repeat if I find more Aphids.

I did some maintenace and took out some of the older dead leaves from the Collards, Bok Choy, Lettuces and Onions. I also put some bark chip mulch in the veggie pots that didn’t have any.

I harvested a bunch of greens for a big salad for the family: Romaine, Red Oakleaf and other Lettuces, Mizuna, Curly Leaf Parsley and a few (spicy) Red Giant Mustard. Yumm! We had so much salad and it was so good. I also harvested a few small Snap Peas.

My Mom saves Green Onion bottoms (with root) from the kitchen and later plants them in the garden. We had a few on the kitchen window sill, so I took those and planted them in the empty spots in one of the 7-gallon GeoPot that has Red Onions. I planted carrot seeds in half of the pot back in the fall, but they either didn’t germinate or died. I also realized that I had some Shallots that I purchased a while back and never planted, so I divided those and planted them in the same pot.

As the sun was setting, I planted two 5-gallon fabric Dirt Pots, each with four Spinach ‘Bonnie’ plants. There seemed to be a bunch more space in the pots, so I planted the young Elephant Garlic in cell-packs that I had left over from last year’s fall planting. It was getting dark, so I’ll much these with compost then bark and place the pots in the front yard.

Lotsa Gardening Done…

I had a day off today and it was a nice day… so I was motivated to get a lot of gardening done before it starts to rain again.

I started the day off by taking the Horseradish and some seedlings ( Cerinthe Folia, Butter Daisy, Tweedia, Alyssum, Tidy Tips, Bells of Ireland and Larkspur ) from the grow lights in my bedroom outside to harden off. This made more room for the Tomato and Pepper seedlings, which I raise up higher and placed directly under the growlights.

I divided the seven Cerinthe Folia and potted them into four pots. I looked around the garden to find a future home for the Cerinthe and I noticed that there where about 5 volunteers Folia where they grew last year… so I think I may plant these seedlings in the front yard once they get bigger.

I also took out Pepino Dulce Folia cutting because they were way overdue to be potted up. I placed them into three 5″ pots before I figure out where to plant them.

Many of the winter veggies seedlings (Bok Choy, Dwarf Blue Curled Kale and Dinosaur Kale) are getting too big for the cell-packs so I divided them and placed them into drinking cup pots.

In the front garden, I planted a few of the Agrostemma and Early Gigantea Sweet Peas seedlings into the two big clay pots. I think I’ll also plant the Cerinth and Bright Lights Swiss Chard here to really fill these pots.

In the SFG Veggie Beds, I planted a square with the Daikon. They were really tiny and I was afraid slugs may eat them, so I overed them with clear plastic drinking cups (with holes for ventilation). I also planted one and half squares of the Broad Leaf Mustard. They looked like they were getting ready to bolt… Hopefully, they won’t. I also planted two Green Lucullus Swiss Chard into half a square.

I planted the Cilantro into it’s own pot and hope it would fill out. To help this out, I also planted some more Cilantro seeds between the plants and mulched it with cocoa mulch.

I also sowed a succession planting of the Super Snappy Pea seeds between the existing Super Snappy Peas which are already flowering and fruiting even though they are only about a foot tall. Hmm? I wonder if they will get taller like our usual 5+ foot tall Snap Peas.

Not much has happened in the Wintersowing bins, but I did see a few sprouts from the Subaru Wildflower Mix.

Purple Potatoes

It was getting dark and as I putting thing away, I found the Purple Potatoes that I harvested from last year and noticed they were sprouting. I got to get them into the soil soon.

Harvested Green Onions

My Mom also harvested a few Green Onion stalks for tonights dinner. It’s great to be able to harvest veggies straight from the garden when you need it.