Veggie garden friends of the Mid-alantic 2

We planted ours around the 17th of March. Sad to say that a GH got at them, we did get a fence around them and saved all but one. They are growing again but not sure if we will get anything from them. Ric says your Broccoli bolted, some weather conditions can encourage that type of growth. If it was later in the year you could cut off the flower stem and possibly you might get new growth. I don't think it would work this time of year as we are headed into the warmer weather.
Who could not love peas. They feed both the spirit and the flesh.

I was thinking that myself. Maybe next year. Thanks everyone.

Well, Our garden hasn't been terribly productive yet. We got very nice onions and still are, the radishes never got thinned and they were small and woody. Didn't get the lettuce planted at all. Asparagus has done great and is looking better than ever and we will just have to wait and see on everything else.

I am having my first fresh salad of the year today - mixed leaf lettuce grown in a window box. At least I am finally getting some veggies.

My tomatoes, beans and peppers are still tiny but finally growing. I gave up on the peas that I planted late March. They are usually done before the morning glories start growing. They finally came up and are racing the morning glories up the trellis. It will probably be too hot to harvest any, but I will wait and see what happens.

I planted my Brussels sprout seedlings in the flower garden (my other veggies are in containers.) I also added a rhubarb plant.near the back of the bed. I killed a rhubarb plant two years ago by unknowingly planting it near the black walnut trees in the back yard.

Has anyone grown Swiss chard or kale? If you grow them from seed, when do you plant them?

You could plant chard now, however, I usually start it earlier. I started indoors and have seedlings just getting going in the garden.

How are everyone's veggies coming?

I'm finally seeing some progress. Got cukes and squash almost ready to pick. Tiny tomatoes. First pepper flower. And radishes! I didn't even sow radish seed this year-- these must be from the seed I sowed last year that I thought had failed. I've been making sweet radish relish with the roots and sauteeing the greens with onion.

I just got some seed for midsummer/fall plantings. Chard, endive, fennel, leek, broccoli, brussels sprouts and some other stuff.

Here's my first cuke ripening (OOPS< WRONG PHOTO! Let me try again)

This message was edited Jun 19, 2009 8:19 PM

Chinese Yellow cuke (this one should be clearer)

Zucchini

Alpine strawberries (Nathan's favorite!)

And my radishes (White Icicle)

Ric says we have peas to pick. Hopefully tomorrow morning :}

Crazy weather and crazy schedule, I never got my veggies in the ground. We'll see what tomorrow's weather is.

I have been feasting on mixed salad greens, and yesterday I picked a few sugar snap peas for a steak salad. I have been mixing a verity of fresh basil leaves in with the greens, nice to get a taste of basil spice or lemon basil in an unexpected bite. Thanks to Jill.

Raining today don't know how much gardening I'll get done today. : (

LadyG, don't think I'll be doing any pea picking today either, it is pouring here, too.

Holly, don't let the peas get to big, put on a raincoat if you have to. LOL

I'll send Ric! LOL

Bribe him, if you have to. :)

Radish greens--Kub please describe. I grow radish greens lot better than I do radish roots!

It's raining here today; it started while I was taking suckers off my tomato plants and tying them up this morning. I have 36 plants, of eight different varieties. So far I have small unripe tomatoes and that's all; I'm sure they'll be later this year than usual because I'm not growing any cherry or grape types. Lettuce is starting to bolt, and I harvested all my spinach and tried freezing it raw to see how that works. Broccoli raab never forms those lovely little florets for me but we've been eating the leaves anyway, although that's starting to bolt, too.

We've had both peas and beans from the garden; I'm growing Merveille de Kelvedon peas and I planted a double row, which was a mistake because they came in so thickly. They're hard to find to harvest. My twelve-year-old granddaughter and her friend were helping me pick yesterday but I followed after them and found an amazing amount left, so I think they were too busy talking to look much. But they helped me shell them and I got eight more packages blanched and frozen - and a package of Fin de Bagnol beans and one of Pelandron beans. The beans are just starting to come in. We also had our first zucchini last night - a lovely Ronde de Nice. I am hoping that the squash vine borers and squash bugs give me a break this year! I'm also getting green onions from the onion sets I put in earlier, but I'm not sure if they'll develop into regular onions. I've never had much luck with that.

And I'm going to have to replant carrots; all I got was one carrot so far from a whole row that I planted twice! My fennel is coming up though, and so are the beets and chard. And a few salsify in a short row to which I just added some more seeds to try to fill in. All this rain has been nice for my garden; I've only had to water a few times.

I freeze my tomatoes after I cook them down, and I also dry them, but we love them any way we can eat them. We like sliced tomatoes with basil, garlic and olive oil, and a touch of balsamic vinegar, as a summertime salad. I should have some cucumbers coming soon, too. Jill, I also have a mandoline but I've never figured out how to use it. Any suggestions or videos to look at?

Leslie

Sally, I just learned how to cook the radish greens recently from someone who runs a local CSA. I de-stem the leaves, sautee some onion until translucent, add the greens and cook until tender. Add salt, pepper and seasonings as you like. I add a dash of nutmeg to all dark greens like that (I learned that trick from Ina Garten on the Food Network, sounds weird, but it does taste good). The radish greens do have a touch of bitterness to them. I like the taste, especially with a little vinegar, but the lady who told me how to prepare them suggested mixing them with spinach or some other milder green if the taste was too strong. They don't taste any more bitter than kale to me. Today, I'm going to cut some of the greens into ribbons and add them to a quiche made with my backyard eggs.

Leslie, I always have such horrible luck getting carrots to germinate right. I have a couple in the garden right now that are from seed I sowed last year. Sometimes they just like to take their time! How do you dry your tomatoes? I wanted to try sun-drying some this summer. Not sure how well that would work in our humidity, though.

Holly, did you get your peas?

Thanks Kubileya--I think I should give up on radish roots and just do mixed garden greens. I sneak in some lamb's quarter, and even used a couple leaves of garlic mustard last week. I'll try hte nutmeg.
My spinach has gone to seed and I was trying to dry it and save seed, but--its been pouring here so don' now if it'll ever dry up. I'm bad about committing halfway to my plans.

Amazingly my carrots DID sprout- over on Veg forum they've been stressing good moisture and I sure have that for once

Should be an awesome year for all our tropicals, but I don't think many vegetables we usually use fall in that group. I did pot up some turmeric roots for fun. They did nothing at all for two months, now finally some very slow roots and a shoot have appeared.

Kubileya, I got a Nesco dehydrator last year, after returning a cheaper brand that just didn't work well, and I used that to dry my tomatoes - and the pears we got from our trees. I was really pleased at how well the Nesco did the job. This year I've used it so far to dry strawberries and the result was so much better than with the other brand last year. The other dryer, which I ordered from Pinetree Garden Seeds, dried unevenly and took forever.

I still have a bunch of dried tomatoes left over because I haven't quite figured out how to incorporate them into my usual recipes, but they taste excellent. The only things we've air-dried successfully in this climate, which is probably just like yours, are oregano, thyme and rosemary. Years ago I also made leather-breeches beans, strung up and left hanging on the porch, and that worked. Anything thicker would probably mold.

Leslie, I am still planning on coming over sometime. Since I thought about it, it hasn't stopped raining. :) Your harvest sounds great so far. I planted a few peas. Enough for a few salads if they lasted long enough for me to get them in the house. My broccoli is bolting as well as the romaine. I'll have to pick your brain.
Thinking of you and DH.
It's been raining today. Imagaine that. I am thankful that I haven't had to water.
Those greens sound great, Kubileya.

I just got home Ric and I have only seen each other in passing, today. He was getting up as I was leaving with Josh. I came home and he was leaving with Jamie and I will be gone to babysit Lily & Lucas before he gets home and probably he will be in bed by the time I get home. It has been a day. But yes the peas did get picked, that Ric is a gem! He proudly showed me a nice large container of them before he ran out the door with Jamie. I think we will have some of them for Fathers Day dinner. I also came home to a pallet of neatly stacked used brick. He unloaded all the brick. Enough to do a 10 X 12 patio and maybe a bit more.

Oh! I see another project thread in our future.

LOL Ladyg, They are for the parking area there by the potting shed where the trellis for the wisteria will be. I really wish we had been able to get the trellis for the wisteria up before the swap. The trellis will go over the brick area about 14 X 14. Actually it was Ric's idea to brick the driveway, I just wanted the trellis. I will love it but it seemed like a lot of work taking out the stone and putting down brick, but I sure won't complain and moving the stone out and laying the brick is something I can help with. I think Jamie would like our driveway stone for his driveway so maybe he will come and dig most of it for us. When it is done the trellis and brick will cover about 1/2 of the drive, bet Ric ends up bricking the whole thing. LOL

Can't wait to see it.

Hey, if your back can stand all that bending over to lay brick, more power to ya. Me, I'll just enjoy the pictures.

Here are my tomato kit planters, salad greens on the bottom & 2 Early Girl tomato plants.

This planter has 2 Plum Dandy tomato plants.

That's a nice use of space, ladyg! Your tomatoes look really healthy, too.

Jan, you're welcome to come over. I've been trying to keep after the weeds so the place will still look presentable. I worked on it this morning before the rain started, and this afternoon when we were stealing some time in the garden to put a shelf under my outdoor sink, a friend called to ask if I had any lettuce to spare. I said sure, so she popped over, and turned out she brought her sister, brother, and great-nephew along, who were visiting from Minnesota, to show them my garden. She says it's definitely one of the sights to see in our area, but warned her brother that he'd have serious Garden Envy, and he did. Nice to have some immediate benefit from all that bending!

Thanks Leslie. I grew the plants from seed, and the soil and fert is from gardeners supply. The planters sits on the edge of the driveway so they get lots of heat from the cement. I have some current tomatoes in the other in-ground garden and they are tiny compared to these.

Hello, it's Ric, I may be diverging from veggies but it's to wet to even weed, they are so crisp from all the water they tend to snap rather than pull and if you use your prayer bones, your wet to mid-thigh the first time you knell.
Yesterday we did a 127 mile round trip to visit my Unc, to get used brick @ $.20 each. 2 of his sons have a landscape and tree business in Chambersburg, Pa. and replaced a beautiful brick driveway with the new pavers. My little cousin (6'2" 280#) challenged the alpha with, " I got more brick than you can use". That remains to be seen! They must have 4-5 k of used brick! Anyway, we took the scenic route home and found more places to look for treasures. We brought home 500 of the 882 we need for the driveway. At 4.5# each, we are limited as to what we can carry. At this point Karen Carpenter sings "We've Only Just Begun". Here's the fruit of the first visit. Hopefully this will reappear under projects this fall, if it fits the agenda. My cousin said I could have the decorative moss at no extra charge. :-) LOL Ric

That brick looks wonderful. What a lucky find! We salvaged some from somewhere or other too, and used it for a path and patio in our garden. Old brick has such a lovely color and texture; it's great for landscaping and other decorative purposes.

Your tomatoes are lookin' good, ladygardener.

I got the first zucchini today. Cooked them on the grill with a little honey and black pepper. They were goooood.

Don't be intimidated by your mandoline! That weird thing with prongs that probably came with it is for doing things like potatoes -- stab it down into the potato so you can hold the thingie rather than putting your hand right on the potato (and slicing your fingers). Or live on the edge and just hold onto the veggie as shown in the photo below (which came from this article on cukes & refrigerator pickles: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1587/). Pay attention when you start getting close to the end... you do *not* want to trim the ends off your fingers! Just leave generous stubs and toss them in the compost.

Jill, I'll have to try it again once I start getting cucumbers. Sounds like the perfect veggie to learn on! Thanks!

Thanks, Leslie. One of these days. LOL

The mandoline is great for potatoes, too, for scalloped or chips.

I saw 2 zucchini. One about 3 in. the other about 1/2 in. Yippee!!!

Sugar Oregon Peas, These are so good and sweet. I pisked these to add to my friends veggie did try for a party, These were the only veggie we ran out of. Will be a favorite in my garden next year too.

We've got quite a few Ronde de Nice zucchini and a Tatume and a Verde Chiaro d'Italia. The last two are new varieties I'm trying but I think I left the Tatume to get too big....The plants are so huge that it's hard to find anything. I don't know whether it's my compost, or the Spray-N-Grow, or what, but everything is coming up gangbusters! I've also been picking a lot of beans. My peas are about done but I got about twelve packages for the freezer, plus some to eat fresh.