4/18 Harvest - Overwintered Indiana Veggies

A few of the Red Russian Kale, tatsoi and bok choy plants actually survived the Indiana winter in our side garden without being protected at all .  Actually, they were more like abandoned and forgotten, but the important thing is that they survived!  Unfortunately, this "survival" was very short lived, since there were only about 2-3 weeks between my noticing the new growth on the stumps of plants leftover from last fall and my discovery this weekend that they were all bolting.

I harvested most of them (there were not that many to begin with), except for a few that I'm going to leave alone in my attempt to collect seeds from them.  The bok choy and tatsoi looked like their leaves were changing shape (became more elongated).

I told Keith that I wanted to toss them in the salad, to which he scrunched up his face and said "can't we just have normal salad like normal people?"  Ha.  Not if you're going to marry a newbie gardener who wants to eat everything that will grow in the vegetable garden!  I think he was scared by the flowers.

This was the flowering bok choy (or tatsoi, I couldn't really tell with the elongated leaves).

Here's the Red Russian Kale bolting.  Only two plants survived in the side garden, so I harvested one and left the other one alone to go to seed.

I washed and trimmed all the edible leaves (some of the outer leaf stems were starting to look a little squishy).  I didn't weigh the harvest, but I would guess they totaled a few ounces.  Instead of tossing them in the salad, I made a quick stir fry with some olive oil, a dash of soy sauce and some garlic powder (we didn't have any garlic).  There was barely enough for us to each have a few bites as a snack, but at least we got to eat something tasty that we grew this week, and it made me happy.

Oh, here is a little handful of overwintered parsley and cilantro that also came from the side garden. I meant to toss these in the salad, too, but in the process of discovering and dealing with the bolted hardy greens, the salad making plans got forgotten.

Tomorrow, I will post some pictures from our main garden.  With all the rain we had last week, the peas are really starting to take off.  I have 12 feet of peas and more peas growing!

Happy Harvest Monday!

4/4 Harvest - Overwintered Peppers

I'm officially declaring my experiment with overwintering peppers indoors a big success.  We harvested an occasional pepper here and there throughout this winter as needed, but today we harvested most of the cayenne peppers from the indoor pepper plant. My first "big" harvest of 2011, and I totally forgot to weigh it.  Sigh.  After a long winter, I guess I'm just out of practice with harvesting and reporting.

Most of the harvested peppers were already dry (because we left them on the plant unharvested for so long), but there were a few "young" peppers in there as well, as you can see in the picture above.

Above is a full body shot of the cayenne pepper plant in all its glory before we harvested the peppers.  Well, actually you can't see the peppers all that well in this picture, but they were really there.

Here's a close-up with some peppers and new blossoms.  I posted last December that this plant was starting to put on new blossoms.  After that, the blossoms and new peppers just kept coming all winter long with hardly a break, which we thought was pretty cool.  And, the pepper plant stayed green and healthy the whole time.  The best part about it all was that this plant required pretty much zero maintenance from us, aside from watering once every week or two.  Ahh, if only the rest of vegetable gardening was that simple.

Keith asked me if I was going to put the plant outside again after the weather warms up.  And the answer is... I haven't decided.  My first thought was, why fix something if it's not broken?  But who knows, maybe it will do even better outdoors in the summer heat.

Aside from the peppers, there's been many new garden activities and I'm past due on some garden updates.  Without making any promises, I'll try to post more often this week to catch up on all the garden happenings.

Happy Harvest Monday!

First Sign of Life

"Hey come look, there's something really exciting in the kitchen!"

Keith dragged me out of bed this morning and made me put on my glasses ("you need your eyes for this").  I guess he didn't want me wasting any time putting in my contacts, and well, I am pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses.  He made me stand in front of the kitchen sink and I thought maybe there was a nasty bug or something in the sink.

"Look out the window!"

I looked, and I saw my raised boxes still covered with snow, albeit less snow than yesterday.  Huh?

 
"LOOK!"

And then I saw it. 

Sign of life from the supermarket garlic I planted last Halloween!  I can't believe these things really stayed alive underneath an average of a foot of snow for the last three months.

1/10 Harvest - back from the (almost) dead

I remember the good old days (i.e. last year) when I got really excited about every single plant in my garden and monitored for the slightest visible evidence of vegetative growth on each of my plants.  Well, I still care and I still think that growing plants are exciting, but I'm going to admit to you all that I've been getting a bit... lazy.  Even though my winter gardening responsibilities involve only indoor plants, I haven't spent nearly as much time or effort on taking care of what few plants I have.

One of the near-casualties of the diminished gardening effort on my part involved the potted basil.  Remember when I planted some basil cuttings to winter them indoors?  They grew really well for a while, and then they almost died because I stopped watering and harvesting them.  The plants got too heavy and tall for the grow box, and they they started wilting and drying up from lack of water.  I know, I know, I was a totally bad plant mom.

About two or three weeks ago, I felt bad enough and decided to clean up my act.  I took a pair of scissors gave my basil a much needed trim.  After cutting off all the dead branches and leaves, I was left with a basil plant whose main and most side stems were dried brown.  There were very few leaves left on the plant and I didn't think it would make it.  I wish I had a picture to show you, but I didn't take a picture of this almost-dying basil.

But now it's alive again!  The miracle of consistent watering!

I'm thoroughly pleased to report that the top of this basil plant is busy growing new branches and leaves.

Here (pictures above and below), you can see how the main stem and most of the side branches are dried and brown.  I really thought that this basil was toast.  But surprisingly enough, there's somehow life in there, and new leaves and young branches are growing out of the dry and brown ones.

I've been harvesting a few basil leaves here and there for things like homemade pizza, pasta and salads.  It's not much, but it still allows me to eat something that I've grown myself, and that makes me happy.

Check out Harvest Monday for other winter gardeners' bounty!

1/3 Harvest - Daikon Radish

Happy New Year to everyone! 

I really want to shout out "Let the new gardening year begin!" but ironically enough, this first post of the new year presents my very last harvest of 2010.

After waiting for what seemed like forever for these daikon radishes to size up, I, uh, forgot to harvest them before a ton of snow started falling in December.  Yeah, blame it on the snow, right?  The side garden where these radishes were planted was covered with over a foot of snow and looked like this (see below) for the most part of December.

I was a bit worried that the daikons wouldn't survive a whole month of snow and bitter cold temperatures.  But the weather finally warmed up a bit while we were out of town during the last week of December, and I had one day window of opportunity to pull the daikon radishes out of the ground on December 31.

The green tops looked pretty wilted and some of the stems were rather squishy, so I didn't know if the radishes themselves would be any good.  But I harvested them anyway and was pleasantly surprised to see that some of them actually looked edible.

Somehow I was under the (false?) impression that daikon radishes would get really big, like the size of my arm, but these were only on par with small/medium carrots.  Many of these daikon radishes had really long taproots, though, so I wonder if they would grow bigger in better soil that's not as clayey like the soil in this side garden.

Anyway, these radishes had a slight spicy kick to them but they still tasted fresh and crunchy.  Even the green tops were still edible after I trimmed off all the wilty and squishy ones.  Keith and I are not big fans of eating them raw, so I chopped them up (both green tops and the radish roots) and tossed them in a stir fry with some chicken and broccoli.  They were good!

Visit Daphne's Harvest Monday to see if what other winter gardeners are still harvesting.

12/13 Harvest - December Peppers

Hello again everyone!  Somehow I let a whole month get away me from since my last blog post.  It was partially because my gardening has slowed down considerably due to wintry weather and partially because I've been enjoying some downtime with my family in California and with Keith in Indiana since my last work project in Texas ended.

But now I'm happy to be back.  For today's Harvest Monday, I don't have too much in the way of harvest, but I do have a wee bit of excitement to share.

Do you see what I see?  New pepper blossoms, in mid-December!  My cayenne pepper plant that I brought indoors about two and a half months ago has been not only surviving, but actually thriving, flowering and starting to make little baby peppers again.  I'm really surprised that the plant is producing new flowers even though we left most of the ripe red peppers on the plant for "looks."  I remember reading somewhere that picking ripe peppers will keep the plant from slowing or ceasing new flower/fruit production, but apparently the reverse is not necessarily true?

This is the top-ish view of the pepper plant.  It's a bit hard to see in this picture, but there are dozens of new blossoms on this plant.  Outside the window, you can see some dusting of snow from early last week (all these pictures were taken last week).  We've gotten a lot more snow this week to a point where I can barely see the raised boxes (10 inches high) outside under the snow. 

Compared to less than two months ago, this pepper plant has grown a lot more foliage to support new blossoms.  If you think that we crank up the heat in the house to greenhouse conditions - we don't.  We keep the thermostat set at between 66 F (night) and 68 F (day).  When I first brought this pepper plant in to winter indoors, I had hoped that it would hunker down and survive the indoor conditions without dying so that it could start to grow again next spring.  But this plant is still actively growing and definitely exceeding my best expectations.

Okay, one last picture before I sign off.  Oh, and in spirit of Harvest Monday, I did harvest four cayenne peppers from our growbox pepper plant (unfortnately no pictures) yesterday to use in our slow-cooker beef stew.  Whoa, we had some spicy stew!

Happy winter gardening!

Planting Garlic on Halloween

After seeing pictures of other gardeners' beautiful garlic harvests earlier this year, I knew that I wanted to try my hand at growing garlic, too. I especially wanted to plant some hardneck garlic so that I could grow and enjoy some delicious garlic scapes in addition to the better flavors of homegrown garlic.  But I didn't realize that seed garlic would sell out so fast from reputable online vendors. I also didn't realize that shipping costs for seed garlic would be so expensive!

Long story short, I did not get around to buying any seed garlic cloves for hardneck garlic varieties this year.  However, I wasn't about to let this deprive me of my garlic growing experience.

So I decided to take the frugal and late-to-the-game approach to growing garlic:  I bought some plain garlic from the grocery store. Yep, the unknown softneck variety.

I took 22 of the best looking garlic cloves and soaked them overnight in some baking soda-and-water solution.  The next day (Halloween!), I peeled the cloves, rinsed them in water and proceeded with planting them in the corner of one of my new raised beds.  I planted them 4 inches deep and 6 inches apart in all directions.  My designated garden fork (formerly known as a dinner fork in the kitchen) worked great for digging 4-inch deep holes for the garlic cloves.  I will mulch this area with some straw next weekend.

I have no idea if any of these supermarket garlic cloves are going to grow and develop new garlic bulbs.  But I do know that if I didn't try, I would never know.  So here goes, my Great Garlic Experiment of 2010-2011!

Ripening Indoor Peppers

The indoor cayenne pepper plant has been busy ripening its peppers.  These peppers had been green for so long, I was really starting to doubt  that they would ever turn red.  But a couple of weeks after I first brought this plant indoors, the peppers started turning red one by one, and now they are beautiful.

Many of these peppers are ripe enough to be picked, but Keith wants to leave them on the plant because they look so pretty.  I have to admit, this colorful pepper plant is definitely brightening up this corner of the living room.  I'm really hoping that this plant can overwinter indoors without much trouble, so that it could grow even more foliage and peppers next year.

Overwintering Peppers Indoors - Day One

I first entertained the idea of overwintering peppers about a month ago.  This past weekend, I decided to pull the trigger and go for it.  First, we took the two cayenne pepper plants in the five-gallon bucket and tipped the whole thing upside-down.  While Keith was holding the plants and the top of the soil (which was now at the bottom) in his hands, I lopped off about a third of the roots from the bottom of the soil (which was now at the top) and separated the smaller pepper plant from the larger one.  The larger plant got transplanted into a new pot to be brought inside for the winter.

Here is the pepper plant in its new pot and new indoor space for the winter.  I pulled off all the damaged leaves from the bottom, so the plant looks a bit bare at the moment.  That is a south-facing window behind the pepper plant, so I hope the plant can get enough sunlight to survive the winter indoors.  I'm definitely not expecting the plant to thrive indoors - I'm willing to settle for any level of "alive"! 

Here's a close-up of the pepper plant.  As you can see, this plant still has lots of green cayenne peppers.  If they ever turn red, this pepper plant is going to look really pretty!  Well, it already looks like a pretty houseplant in the living room, and Keith and I are very happy to have some greenery in the house.  But with some red peppers, I'm sure it will look even prettier.

I'm really curious to see how this will work out.  I'll be providing regular update during this winter for those of you who may be curious.

Linked to: Tuesday Garden Party

Planting Basil Cuttings

I'm very happy to report that the cuttings I took from my basil three weeks ago have all rooted beautifully in water.  If you'd like to see how the cuttings looked two weeks ago when they were just starting to send out roots, please see my post on Basil Propagation from Cuttings.

All three basil cuttings have grown new leaves as well as new roots in water.

Close-up of new roots on basil cuttings

I planted these rooted cuttings into separate containers and removed the bottom set of leaves because they were too close to the soil surface.  These new plants will overwinter indoors, most likely in our indoor grow box, and hopefully provide us with plenty of fresh basil all winter long.  Cheers for a successful basil propagation experiment!

This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party.

Growing Rosemary from Seed

When we were at Menards this spring to purchase seeds for our first vegetable garden, we used both logic (let's get bush varieties of some vegetables because we don't have any trellises yet) and whim (oh, look at the pretty picture on this seed envelope!) to select our seeds.  When it came to rosemary, I think it was Keith who said something to the effect of "rosemary would be good to have around, for cooking chicken and stuff."  So we bought a packet of rosemary seeds.

The seed packet instruction said to sow the seeds indoors 10-12 weeks before the average last frost date.  Well, it was already May, well past the last frost, but that shouldn't make a difference if I'm sowing seeds indoors, right?  So I sowed my seeds in little cups, and waited for them to germinate.  I waited, waited and then waited some more.

I don't actually remember how long it took before the first sign of life popped up from those seeds, but it took a really long time, at least 3-4 weeks.  And germination was sporadic.  As in, although some seeds started germinating at 3-4 weeks, the other seeds didn't germinate for at least 2 months.  The rest of them just didn't make it.  Later, I learned that even good rosemary seed stocks only have about 30 percent germination rates at best.  My seeds were probably very average, then, instead of very subpar that I accused them of being at the time.

June 25, 2010 (at 6 weeks)

After the seedlings got their second set of leaves, I transplanted them to bigger containers, anticipating that they would need the extra space.  Ha, if only I knew then what I know now.  At the rate that these seedlings have been growing, they probably could have stayed in their baby containers for the first year.

I scoured the internet to see what we were doing wrong with them and why they weren't growing faster.  Then I learned that rosemary is notoriously difficult to germinate and to grow from seed, and most websites talking about growing rosemary recommended growing them from cuttings or nursery plants.  All this just made me and Keith even more determined (read: stubborn) to keep growing our rosemary seedlings. 

August 8, 2010 (at 12 weeks)

As small as these seedlings were, they just gave off the most incredibly strong (and pleasant) rosemary aroma every time I touched their teeny leaves.  It's just pure torture waiting for them to grow big enough to harvest!

August 21, 2010 (at 14 weeks)

It's been almost four months now, and some of the seedlings have finally started putting on some noticeable growth.  I think the largest seedlings have almost doubled their height in the last month.  I say doubled, but it's still not that much when you're talking about seedlings that are only one to two inches tall.  We did learn one thing: water them very little.  When we kept the soil looking visibly moist, the seedlings seemed to be at a standstill.  When we cut back and only watered a little bit once a week or less, to a point where the soil looked very dry on top, the seedlings finally started to grow.

September 5, 2010 (at 16 weeks)

The rosemary seedlings were moved into our indoor grow box after we built it in July, and that's where they have been this whole time.  I meant to take them outside when they grew to a "decent size" but I don't think they are there yet.  At this rate, they will probably spend all winter in the grow box.  Even when these seedlings reach a decent size, I won't plant them in the ground because I don't think they can survive the winters in Indiana.  But hopefully we can transplant them into a good sized container someday, so we can have rosemary year-round.  

You know, for chicken and stuff.

*** Rosemary Update on April 13, 2011***

Basil Propagation from Cuttings

At some point, I read about basil propagation from cuttings.  I admit, the last thing we need in our garden right now is more basil plants.  But in the interest of science and garden experiments, I had to try this out for myself.

Last week, I cut off different sizes of tops from a basil plant, and stuck them in small glasses of water.  I didn't take a picture then, but this is how they looked a week later.

After one week (Sunday, 9/5/10) I could see the beginnings of roots forming on the largest of the three cuttings.

Just 24 hours later (Monday, 9/6/10), the roots have already grown longer.  I'll probably wait another week or two and plant this one in a pot of soil to see how well it grows.

If this works out, it might be a good way to have "new" basil plants for the winter.  I'll just have to find some nice sunny spot indoors (easier said than done!) for my winter basil.

Have any of you propagated your basil or any other herbs from cuttings?  Did it work out well for you?

This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party.

Overwintering Peppers

It is still sweltering hot outside and I haven't harvested a single pepper yet this year, but I'm already thinking about possibly overwintering peppers.  Yeah, I admit it, patience is definitely not one of my strong suits.  Planning ahead, however, is! 

Eight weeks ago, I started some Long Thin Cayenne pepper seeds to see how well they would grow in our new indoor grow box.  I knew it was late in the season to start peppers, but it was an experiment and I wasn't counting on being able to actually harvest any peppers this year (I sure was hoping, though!).  But the pepper seedlings did really well in the grow box, so we transplanted three of them outside.  And now we have peppers!  I don't know how long it will take for these to ripen red, but I'm excited for even green peppers.

Cayenne peppers, still green.

There are actually two cayenne pepper plants in this five-gallon bucket.  I was worried that they would be crowded, but they seem to be doing okay so far.

This is the cayenne pepper plant growing in the square foot gardening box.  This plant is smaller than the ones growing in the five-gallon bucket, but some peppers have already formed on this plant, hopefully with more to come.

I've been wondering if I could bring the pepper plants inside to overwinter them.  Wondering always leads to questions, many questions.  How much sunlight do pepper plants require to overwinter?  Could they survive indoors near a south-facing window?  Or would east-facing windows be better during the winter?  If I could successfully overwinter pepper plants, would they produce peppers all winter long, or hunker down and just go into some sort of survivor dormant mode?

If I could figure out a place to keep them over winter, I sure would like to try to keep them alive, as peppers are technically perennials in warmer zones.  I read somewhere that second year pepper plants are often more productive than first year plants.  Isn't that just fascinating?