Planting in Late Summer for Fall & Spring Harvests

This is the year that I'm going to do it, guys- make the leap and do some serious Fall planting! I think I'm usually tuckered out by the time the end of the summer rolls around. Before I know it, the time to plant for fall has passed me by. Not this year!

I'm been direct seeding Fall veggies in my garden for the past 3 weeks now, and I will finish up the last bit of planting tomorrow. If you're in S.E. Michigan, Northern Ohio, or a place with a similar last frost date (Oct 7th), you still have a few days to hop to it!


Fall Planting list:
Super Sugar Snap Pea
Prize Choy
De Cicco Broccoli
St. Valery Carrot
Grandpa's Admire Lettuce
Winter Density Lettuce
Parade bunching Onion
Rhubarb Red Swiss Chard

I've tried to seed most everything in the new, larger bed (pictured on the left)- it's closest to the side door of our home so if I need to dash out during the winter I'm one or two steps closer, and it already has crazy, thriving Kale there.

I'm planning to put up some quick hoops over the first 8 feet of the bed, enough distance to cover up the Kale, fall onions, and sugar snaps. I might want to do another 8 feet of hoop down at the other end (by the lovely garbage bins), because there are broccoli, a few carrots, and some speckles lettuce down there!

I'll be sure to share pictures of the quick hoops once I get them put together, as well as some guidance and assembly photos. I've been wanting to do serious season extension for a long time, and it will finally happen this year! One step closer to that ideal Badass Garden that's always floating in my mind...

What are you planning on planting this Fall?

Warm Kale Salad with Peppers and Onions

A recent favorite recipe to whip up has been what I'm calling Warm Kale Salad. I'm not sure about the techincal details of what constitutes a salad, but this one includes greens as a base with other featured vegetables, which is good enough in my book to qualify as salad-esque.

My mother-in-law can take the real credit here; she first made a version of this for us years ago, and I remembered it this year as I began drowning in a sea of abundant kale. It's another Kale-hiding recipe, which I am fond of, as I like kale in small pieces in tandem with other veggies.

Without further ado..

Warm Kale Salad with Pepper and Onions

Ingredients:
3 large Kale leaves, de-stemmed and chopped up

1 large Red Pepper, cored and sliced into strips

1 small onion, peeled and chopped

1 cup of corn

2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

 

Directions:

Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium heat

Add the onions and the peppers to the pan once the oil has heat, let the peppers sear on the fire.

When the peppers start to get nice and tender, add the corn, and the garlic to the pan. 

Once the corn has cooked for 2-3 minutes, add in the kale, pepper, and salt, and stir for 1 minute.

Empty the mixture onto a plate.

Serve and Enjoy!

What's Up Wednesday

Heirloom tomatoes are freaking gorgeous!

Whoa- onions are popping out of the ground! I'd better tuck them in.

Ole' Faithful a.k.a. kale

These Yolo Sweet peppers are cherry-sized right now , 

but getting bigger each day though.

If you are looking for a cucumber variety, 

Spacemaster are fairly compact and they are dang good.

I see some empty spots for more veggies, don't you?

What's Up in your Garden this week?

New Potatoes- Harvesting early potatoes from the garden

This is my third year growing potatoes in the garden- they're one of my favorite things to grow. Potatoes are relatively low-maintenance, the plants are surprisingly    pretty, and potatoes are easy to harvest- I'd recommend them for your planting list next year if you haven't grown them before!

I had a few plants that have had yellowing leaves, despite frequent watering. All their neighbor plants look green and healthy, but these two sad individuals were languishing. When this is the case, or when you get a hankering for potatoes, you can harvest some potatoes early- these are called "new potatoes".

It's a pretty good bet that when the plants are flowering, you've got some small new potatoes available to harvest.
I decided to pull out the two yellowing plants, and got 13 very small-smallish potatoes (left). I believe these are little Yukon Golds from last seasons' garden. I'll be using them up quick in some awesome, ultra-local homefries with garden-grown onions and kale tomorrow- can't wait!

I planted a whole lot of potatoes this year- 60 plants!! Each one of these will yield 5-8 potatoes, and that makes for a whole lotta spuds. I don't usually harvest too many new potatoes, because I like to wait until they get bigger, but with a potential harvest of 300-450 potatoes, I think I can afford to pull a few early!

I think my next early harvest will be some of the Mountain Rose potatoes- those are the dark potatoes with pink flesh. The plants are already really beautiful; the flowers are a pinkish-purple, rather than the traditional white flowers that most potato plants have.

I'll post some pictures on my blog facebook page when I harvest the Mountain Rose potatoes, in case you're curious.

In the mean time, off to enjoy this beautiful weather!

Springing into Summer

Almost everything I started indoors under lights has been transplanted outside to the garden. One of the last things to go out, yesterday, was little German Chamomile starts (on Left). I hope they do well- this is my first year growing lots of herbs so we'll have to wait and see! Harvesting chamomile blossoms and drying them to make tea is definitely on my list of Self-sufficiency Nerd goals.

The garden is growing GREAT- there's so many tones of green out there! We're just about at the point here of planting summer crops in S.E. Michigan; tomatoes, peppers, cukes, squash, and more.

I've been consistently harvesting lettuce and kale from the garden, as well as a few spinach leaves, chives, and green onions from the plants my neighbors gave me. The beans and peas are doing nicely, and the potato plants are shooting up- it's about time that I mound up the soil around them, now that they're getting taller. Leeks seem to be fairing well- the jury's out on whether or not my toilet paper roll blanching method is truly working. The lettuces are starting to bolt and get a bit bitter, so we'll be having lots of salads for dinner this week!

I've started to plant a few tomatoes and peppers outdoors. All the ones I started from seed indoors didn't do very well, but I put them in the mudroom to get some natural sunlight and they've been perking up. If you didn't start any seeds of your own this season, head out to your local nursery and buy some locally-grown transplants :) 

How's your Garden Growing?

Silent Sunday

Kale

Lettuce

The onions I started from seed indoors- looking great!

 Happy Sunday, friends :)

What's Up Wednesday

The Bloomsdale Spinach I planted from seed in the garden is doing great- 

look how big it got in the past few weeks!

From near to far: Kidney and Provider Bush Beans, Potatoes, Carrots and 

 Leeks, Lettuce, Kale, and Onions! Woo- what a green garden!

Carrots are going wild- I'll need to thin them soon

Genovese, Thai, and Lemon Basils newly transplanted outdoors.

You wouldn't know it from the picture, but this is an Apricot Tree! :) So cute.

What's Up in your Garden this Wednesday?

Silent Sunday



 Chives!

    

'Speckles' Lettuces looking beautiful in the garden



Kale and onions in the side yard bed

 

If I can get my hands dirty in the garden, it's a good day.

Happy Sunday :)

     

Homefries with Kale, Onions, and Garlic

I harvested my first kale leaves (curly dwarf kale) from the garden this morning, as well as a green onion, and though, "What to make for breakfast with these?" I spotted russet potatoes I have left over and thought "Homefries!" 

I'm always trying to sneak kale into different recipes- I don't love it as much as others do, but kale is really healthy for you, it's pretty, and it's cold-hardy which is important here up North! So here's the recipe I cooked up- it was quite good. 

Homefries with Kale, Onions, & Garlic

Ingredients:
2 medium russett potatoes, peeled
3-5 kale leaves
1 scallion/green onion
1 clove of garlic
4 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

• Pour the olive oil into a small frying pan and set on the stove, on medium heat
• Meanwhile, dice up the potatoes into small, hashbrown-ish pieces (1/2 inch is good)
• Add the hashbrowns into the sizzling pan, and let them brown a bit
• Dice up the green onions and mince the garlic- add to pan after about 5 minutes 
• Cut the kale leaves from their stems, and chop into small pieces
• Taste potatoes or poke with a fork, to see how much longer they need
• Add kale to the pan when potatoes are almost finished.
• Add salt and pepper to the dish as needed

Serve and Enjoy!

Companion planting- to do or not to do?

In my garden planning for this year, I'm trying to integrate the concept of Companion Planting. The organizer in me likes the idea of clean, straight row of plants, in beds organized by type, but the gardener side of me knows that companion planting can be beneficial to my plants, and is more in line with the concepts of permaculture. I'm currently reading a book on permaculture called, "Gaia's Garden", as well as "Carrots Love Tomatoes". Both of these have been really helpful places, and let's be honest- I'm probably going to make some stuff up anyway, regardless of what the books say.

There also is a concept out there called inter-planting, or inter-cropping, which is planting placement based on spacing efficiency- planting things with shallow roots next to deeply-rooted things, and making better use of you garden space. I think in the end, I'll probably come out with a combination of both. I haven't made much use of staggered planting dates in the past either, so I'll probably try some of that as well. It's hard, for some reason, to hold back and not start all of the tomatoes or onions at one time.

The in mean time, our seedlings are looking quite good! Most of the herbs are up, the Speckles lettuce is cute and speckled with purple flecks already, and we just potted up the kale today!

Garden update- Week 2

It's been two weeks since I planted most of the things in my garden, and everything seems to be doing really well! I have onions everywhere, both varieties of strawberries are going strong, lettuce is doing well, and I have little garlic shoot and potato plants coming up! Still waiting on carrots- I have a few little sprouts of growth but I can't really tell if it's carrots, or just little weeds haha!

Here's some updates photos:

I planted 4 Siberian kale plants and 4 celery plants today that I got from the farmer's market!

 this Glacier tomato is not looking too good.

Potato plants are coming up!!!

onions everywhere!

Strawberry plants are beginning to flower!

Garlic shoots comin up!

more potatoes :)

Garden view