Garden Log - April 18, 2008

The end of the semester and the beginning of everything has kept me busy. Too busy to post, it would seem, however tonight's insomnia presents me with an opportunity. A lot's been going on, but here's a look at what I've got pictures of at the moment.

First off, here's a shot of last year's herb garden. It contains fennel (looks dead but presumably re-seeded?), sage, savory, oregano, and two kinds of thyme. With the exception of the fennel, it looks like it over-wintered quite well to me.


Here's a shot of my two 3'x8' in-ground beds. One contains garlic planted late last fall and the other has some chard and rapini transplants from inside. This is the same chard seen in previous posts. That latter bed has a number of things I planted by seed, none of which has come up just yet.


Last week I received a big order of fruit and berry trees and bushes from Oikos and I've been working on getting them in the ground. Most of these I put into a new garden on the south side of my house. When the snow melted it was all grass there. Here's a shot taken after some prep-work.


And after a little more work, here it is with plums, quinces, strawberries, and a currant bush. The timber part of the edging I brought home from work, intended as firewood, last fall. One of them is actually partly burnt. The two logs are from the woods that abut my property.




And here are some close-ups. First, one of two Nana Beach Plum bushes. These are supposed to bloom nicely so I put them closest to my deck.


There are four strawberry plants around the window well, two Alpines and two "Berries Galore."


Next up are the lemony quinces, one of two shown below.


And finally, a currant bush. I've got another of these I plan to put in elsewhere, after some sleep.


And right near the currant and the quinces, a bit of crowberry. This is a groundcover that should spread, not getting any taller than its current size. It is supposed to "produce sweet acidic purple black berries available year round [...] They were and still are used by Eskimo where they are used to make pies and mixed with other berries to make jelly."


I've done more than this and have a lot going on inside as well, but I'll call it a post for now.

To Plate

Last week Lindsay and I made our first dish using substantial amounts of homegrown produce. I wanted to do something nice with the chard I had harvested, and the recipe we settled on was from Vegweb, simply called Millet with Red Swiss Chard Leaves and Carrots. Before I go on with the details, I'd like to mention that I'm using this post for Grow Your Own, a monthly food blogging event hosted over at Andrea's Recipes.

Now, it so happens that I'm a pretty big fan of millet (and carrots), so this looked like a good recipe to me. I decided to modify it a little, because I didn't believe the millet would cook through properly as described. As it turns out, I didn't modify it quite enough. Millet, in my experience, is best prepared at a little less than a 1:3 ratio of grain to water, cooked covered for 30 minutes, and then left to stand slightly uncovered for around 10 more minutes. If I try this recipe again, I will probably cook the millet through separately before mixing with the vegetables. Speaking of the vegetables, though I didn't grow these I just had to include a picture of the onion and carrots.


Pretty, no? Anyhow, everything seemed like it was going quite well. For soup broth, I used a cup of Trader Joe's Carrot and Ginger soup and added a cup of water as well. I thought this would complement the ingredients well, but again I think I would do things differently. The dish ended up being a bit bland to my taste. I think a saltier broth would have provided better contrast within the dish when all is said and done.


I cooked the millet separately for about 15 minutes before adding the vegetables and cooking for another 15 minutes. The millet didn't seem like it was done, so I continued to add water and simmer for awhile. I would say another full cup of water was added to the dish during this time.


Unfortunately the millet just didn't quite finish cooking. We didn't want to leave it on any longer because we were afraid the chard and onions would just turn to mush.

I'll probably try this dish again, but first cook the millet through and let it sit a bit before later mixing it with the vegetables. I'll also use a different broth, with hopes that this will minimize the need for Braggs and nutritional yeast, which we ended up using this time around. I do like the combinations in this dish, as well as the fact that it uses the entire chard leaf, including the stem.

For anyone who hasn't tried millet yet but is interested, I encourage you to do so. Around these parts you can pick it up at the Peoples Food Coop and probably at other places as well. I regularly enjoy cooking this with soup broth instead of water to give it a richer flavor.

Edibles

Edibles

My first multicrop, Garden Cress and White Hailstone Radishes.

Swiss Chard, Rapini: Harvest and Reflections

My grow shelves were beginning to feel a little cramped. My chard was getting too tall, and I didn't have any room to raise the lights higher. Besides for this, my rapini, having been unattended for a couple of days, was also pushing its spatial limits. What to do? Harvest!




I'd already taken a few chard leaves for a salad last week, but these were mostly unharvested plants. I transferred them into the Earthbox clone on March 2, but had planted them previously in flats. Part of me wanted to wait until they grew to the size of those I saw at Plum Market. Part of me realized that was silliness. It was this latter part of me that held the scissors.




What's left behind still looks rather happy and healthy, so I assume there will be further harvestable growth. Despite the still somewhat full appearance of my planter, I made out with a fair bit of chard:


So what do I think about growing chard indoors under lights? Well why don't I reflect on that for you...

REFLECTIONS: Swiss Chard

When I read that chard roots can go six feet deep, I knew I hadn't made the optimum choice for an indoor crop. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy with how it has gone. Despite the limited root space, all of the plants are producing well. In addition to this, they're just beautiful. The leaves range from green to plum in color, even within a single plant. Some are bright and shiny green, some are a solid, beautiful purple color, and most of them fall somewhere in between, sporting green to purple leaves with red veins.






Even the small ones are on the bitter side when eaten raw, and I'm not a big fan of bitter. I've never cooked with chard, so I think I'll be scouring the web for some good recipes to help me figure out what to do with my bounty. If any passing reader has a nice chard recipe they'd like to share, I'd love to see it in the comments.

I don't know the exact planting date for these plants, but I'd guess they spent around six weeks in a flat before beign transferred to the self-watering container (in which they really took off). I'd say these plants are therefor around two and a half months old. The seeds were a 59 day variety, but considering their excessive time spent in flats, they seemed to mature indoors at about the normal rate, though not mostly to the projected height of 2 feet.

I will definitely be planting more chard outside this spring. They're a really beautiful edible plant. I'm less likely to grow it indoors, but if I do, it will be the colors of the plant that persuades me.






REFLECTIONS: Rapini

Boy was this an interesting plant. I got the seeds for this from a lot on eBay awhile back. The pack that had my rapini was labeled "Sprouting Broccoli", but they're certainly not that. Rapini, also known as Broccoli Rabe or Broccoli Raab, among other things, is a less common cousin of standard broccoli.


Rapini is fast growing and most of the plant is edible, two nice features for indoor growing. Clipping off the first cluster of flower buds and it's stalk will result in a bevy of side shoots. Once the shoots start to come up, they come up fast, often growing right up into the light fixture. For this reason, they require frequent harvesting. Because many of the flower clusters are relatively small in size, I suggest either having a good number of plants from which you can harvest large amounts frequently, or a lesser number of plants with frequent harvests and short-term storage, until enough of the buds have been collected.


The buds are best before the flowers emerge, but remain edible for a while after. The stalks are supposed to be edible, but I have yet to successfully enjoy them. I find that they grow tough rather quickly. I'd like to try some of these after blanching them.


The leaves are also edible and, while slightly bitter, provide a brocolli-like taste, as do the buds and (presumably) the stalks.

This may be a plant worth growing indoors, thanks to its quick growth and large degree of edibility. I will surely be planting it in the garden this spring.

Garden Log - March 22 and 25, 2008

A lot has been going on in here lately, including a lot of new seeds planted for transplant in late May. I thought it was about time to get some new photos up.

I decided the pea plants were growing too fast to stay downstairs on the grow shelves. I've replanted them into a couple good-sized pots. One will stay here in the kitchen and the second is going to Lindsay's house.




My tarragon seedlings also have a new home in the kitchen. Here's one of the three pots.


I harvested half of my garden cress growing in the bonsai container for a salad last week. In the empty half I planted White Hailstone Radishes and more cress. This shot was taken 3 days after planting. It occurs to me that this is my first intercropping. I'm going to look into the compatibility of these two crops, as I think they'd make an excellent planting project for children.


And here's a shot of my leading chile pepper, an "Ancho Grande", which I received as a free bonus packet from Baker Creek. Anchos are dried pablanos, so I assume this is a large variety of that kind of chile.


The okra is coming along somewhat slowly, but it is a very attractive seedling.




Finally, my yellow hog tomatoes are coming along quite well. The whole of the plants are rather furry, to go along with the promised fruits.

Houseleaves