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The Old Guy's Garden Record
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The frost was a reminder that I need to get our cold frame covered with 6 mil plastic. We still have several cold mornings in our extended forecast. I started lettuce and spinach today in fourpack inserts. Lettuce varieties seeded were Crispino, Sun Devil, Barbados, Jericho, Coastal Star, and Nevada. The spinach was Abundant Bloomsdale which I'll also direct seed in the garden. I'd hoped to wash the plant trays and pots I have soaking in our garden cart. But as too often happens these days, I just ran out of energy.
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We have a major storm system headed in as I write this evening. I've battened down everything I can, and we're hoping for the best.
An email from True Leaf Market, Fight Rising Grocery Prices with Victory Gardens, got me researching victory gardens. Wikipedia's coverage of Victory Gardens gives a good historical look at how they emerged during World War I & II. We haven't yet had a really good picking of asparagus so far this season. I picked three spears yesterday and none today. But a Washington Post article by Becky Krystal, The best ways to cook asparagus, including roasting and broiling, gave me some ideas on new ways to cook asparagus.
Our how-to: Growing Peppers. I also brought in our parsley seed, as I'd let some of our recently started parsley plants dry out. I overseeded the cells where parsleys had died, but also started soaking some parsley seed for another planting tomorrow.
My only gardening today was putting the parsley seed I started soaking yesterday in a communal pot. There wasn't room over a soil heating mat, so the parsley seed will just have to come up without any bottom heat. Varieties planted were from two packets of similarly named Giant of Italy.
I got out before the rain began and picked asparagus. I'd skipped picking it yesterday. Today's harvest should give us enough to have it with our supper this evening. And a bright spot was that I saw and picked our first asparagus from Bonnie's Asparagus Patch. I have a concern with this year's asparagus. There are lots of very thin spears coming up. That indicates to me that I went too light fertilizing the patch last season. Once we stop picking this spring, I'll lavish the patch with commercial fertilizer and compost.
It’s another cool, rainy day today. With outdoor work not possible, I used the last of a half of the huge ham I worked with at the end of last month to make ham salad. I’d frozen slices of the ham just for this project. And it was a delicious ham with the other half of it now in our big freezer. I slightly thawed the frozen ham before running it through our very old meat grinder. Then it got chopped celery, pickle relish from our garden, sweet onion, Dijon mustard, hard boiled eggs, and lots of Hellman’s mayonnaise.
And of course, the effort proved worth it when I had a ham salad sandwich. Rain We live on high ground, so we're okay on standing water right now. But we've received over three inches of rain in the last few days. Our rainy spell is supposed to break on Monday. That's good, as our grass is getting pretty high.
"April showers bring May flowers" is an old saying. After a rather dry winter, we should have lots of May flowers, getting 4.69 inches of rain so far this month. But it's finally stopped raining, at least for a couple of days. As often happens for us, our March 11 seeding of broccoli has come up too thick and rather leggy. So with a continuation of our cool, wet weather outside, doing some uppotting of the plants was a good job for yesterday. I left eighteen plants in deep sixpack inserts. I moved each of the plants deeper in the soil in the inserts.
Our variation of the Goliath variety is one once sold by Stokes Seeds. When they dropped the variety, I began trying to save seed, as their strain seemed superior to other Goliath and Green Goliath strains sold elsewhere. Saving broccoli seed involves having several plants grown close together blooming at the same time for cross pollination. Harvesting the seed isn't difficult, but cleaning it is difficult. Also pictured above is our lettuce that was seeded on April 1. I've already started thinning the plants down to one plant per cell. All of the seed used was a bit old, so I seeded pretty heavily. Good News, Bad News
Likewise, there were lots of asparagus shoots up today, but none were quite tall enough to pick. So here's hoping the buds and asparagus make it through tomorrow morning's freeze. Taxes I got our taxes finished and filed today. This year, I was really disappointed with Turbotax's help on several issues.
The image below pretty well sums up my day yesterday.
I tried mowing our lawn. But I got the mower stuck in the mud mowing by the side of the road. After using my farming days log chain to pull the mower out, I gave up mowing for the day.
It's too windy today to try covering the cold frame with clear 6 mil plastic. But the wind is supposed to let up a bit tomorrow. I noticed some of our apple blossoms that got damaged in a freeze last Tuesday have opened up into blooms! The blooms shown are on our older Stayman Winesap tree, although a younger Stayman Winesap has buds about to open. Our Yellow Delicious tree is slow leafing out and only has a few blooms on it. Our current extended weather forecast looks promising for the next ten days. Things are warming up, and hopefully, the soil will dry out enough to permit tilling.
I finally got our yard mowed today, although I still have the one acre field next to us to mow tomorrow. Taking care of the field and a bit of ground behind our lot has been a big bonus for us. The field is too small for the farm renter to plant. So we grow sweet corn, melons, and other stuff there in our large (80' x 80') East Garden plot. The land behind our lot also had the bonus of Bonnie's Asparagus Patch which had lain unattended for years but is now beginning to produce asparagus shoots.
I'd been worried about our blooming Stayman Winesap apple trees getting pollinated. Our Yellow Delicious tree has very few blooms on it. But when I was out mowing, to my total surprise, our volunteer apple tree had burst into bloom. It hadn't done much the last few years. So if we have the bees, pollination shouldn't be a problem. The volunteer tree came from where we used to dump cull apples from our original Stayman Winesap apple tree.
So supper this evening will be turkey manhattans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and of course, more fresh asparagus. Our how-to: Growing Asparagus. While it's not too cold today, it's cloudy and very windy. So our cold frame still doesn't have its plastic cover, nor have our pots and trays been rinsed and dried. Winds are supposed to be a little calmer tomorrow. I hope to attend to the cold frame and pots, mow the field next to us, and also burn an accumulation of boxes we've built up in the garage. With an absence of rain in the forecast for the next two or three days, I just may get to begin getting our garden plots tilled and prepared for planting.
First under the frame were our onions that have been hardening off on the back porch for a week or so. Then I moved our geraniums from our sun room to the cold frame. Both trays of plants got a good shot of fertilizer and a thorough watering. Then a tray and a half of Moira tomato plants with Goliath broccoli and Amazing cauliflower filling the other half. Some snapdragons, parsley and other herbs almost filled the cold frame. Other than the onions, these plants will need to harden off, acclimate to outdoor conditions, for a week to ten days before going into our garden. I left the cold frame fully open for a couple of hours before propping it open about eight inches. As days pass, the frame will remain fully open for longer periods of time. And for the most part, it will be closed at night. Ashleigh Smith has a good piece on the True Leaf Market site on How to Harden Off Seedlings in 5 Easy Steps.
Saturday, April 19, 2025 - Freezing Asparagus
Blanching is recommended before freezing asparagus. Fat stalks that we call fenceposts get four minutes in boiling water before going into a cold water cool down bath. Thinner stalks get two or three minutes in the boiling water. I ended up filling five freezer bags with asparagus. Shivi Ramoutar has a good article on the goodfood site on the subject: How to freeze asparagus. I mowed half of the one acre plus field next to us before it started raining Wednesday. But I got the hardest parts mowed, the barn and pond lots. The pond lot has a steep slope that makes you feel like you're going to roll over the mower. The barn lot was littered with sheets of tin that had blown off the old barn. It was very windy yesterday, but that worked in my favor drying out the grass. So I finished mowing the field. With the wind howling, wearing wrap around sun glasses was a must. Rather than trying to compost what was left of the tomato plants, I just ran the lawn mower over them a couple of times. I brought in the other half of that long dollar a pound ham from our big freezer and began thawing it in the microwave for our Easter dinner. And I planted a row of Abundant Bloomsdale spinach beside our tall peas. This is a bit late for planting spinach, as it bolts when the weather gets warm.
Sunday, April 20, 2025 - Easter
After three days of large asparagus harvests, today’s picking was a bit disappointing. I’d frozen all the asparagus we’d picked over a three day period - all 4.6 pounds of it. I was hoping for another big harvest today, but only got enough to go with our ham and scalloped potato lunch and a bit for the fridge. The accepted wisdom on when to quit picking asparagus is when the shoots are thinner than pencil thickness. We have lots of those shoots which I’m letting grow. But we’re also getting a good number of thicker shoots. Today’s asparagus lunch is mostly “fenceposts.”
After finally getting our lettuce starts thinned to one per sixpack cell, I moved the tray of them to our cold frame. With that, our cold frame is now full! And while it is warm and somewhat sunny today, I noticed the ground was still a bit squishy underfoot when walking back to Bonnie’s Asparagus Patch. Mowing will have to wait a day or more. (More rain is predicted.)
I skipped picking asparagus yesterday, so today’s harvest was a bit more than normal. As Annie and I sat on our glider on the back porch this evening, a couple of hummingbirds, the first sightings of this season, visited the feeder I put out on Sunday.
The hummingbirds visiting our feeder were a bit shy at first, only landing on the far side of the feeder where I couldn't get a shot of them. But today, possibly because of the rain, they began to feed from the side ports of the feeder. With the rain today, I'm glad I got our lawn mowed yesterday. I still have to mow the field next to us though. And before mowing, I buried tree fertilizer spikes around our apple trees. Our large Yellow Delicious got three spikes while our Stayman Winesaps each got one. The spikes had deteriorated while stored in the garage. Instead of driving them into the ground, I used a spade to bury them. Hopefully, the rain today will activate the fertilizer spikes. Our Yellow Delicious tree could really use some help. It only produced a few blooms this year.
Monday, April 28, 2025 - Not a Good Day I was toying with the idea of sharing asparagus with a new neighbor until I saw the following headline: I dropped off eight one pound plus bundles of asparagus at Our Father’s Arms food bank for their Monday distribution this afternoon. At Baesler’s Market’s current price for asparagus, that’s about $50 worth. When I dropped off the asparagus, the guy who usually receives our excess produce wasn’t there. Instead, two guys, probably volunteers, were in conversation at the door. No appreciation or even a simple “Thank you” was offered for the contribution. They were actually rather rude. I’ve been a long time supporter of Our Father’s Arms. I’ve donated lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, garlic, watermelon, cantaloupe, grape tomatoes, and huge amounts of butternut squash some years from our garden plots. Today’s experience wasn’t a good one. Our next heavy picking of asparagus beyond what we can use or freeze will go to friends, neighbors, and family instead of an ungrateful organization. Beyond that, I’m not sure I want to support Our Father’s Arms in any way in the future. Yes, I did some gardening today. But I'm still too f*cking mad to write about it now.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 - April Wrap-up
What we have had so far is lots and lots of asparagus. Our early peas are doing well and will need to have trellises put up around them in the next few days. And our fall planted garlic is mostly doing okay. I brought in our melon and squash seed yesterday. Today, I started several pots of South Anna and Waltham Butternut squash. While it's still way too wet out to till, I blew lots of grass clippings over where last year's compost pile was when mowing the field next to us. When the butternut transplants are ready, I'll just pull back the mulch and dig holes for them to go in. Growing butternuts over previous compost sites has worked well for us over the years. When hunting a pan in the kitchen last week, I pulled out what turned out to be a cast iron grill pan. I asked my wife about it, and she said she had no knowledge of it. We decided it must have belonged to an adult daughter who lived with her first child with us for a couple of years. Our first hummingbirds hung around our feeder for two days. Then we had a couple of days with no hummingbirds, as the first two were probably migrants heading north. Today, there are a whole bunch of really small hummingbirds visiting the feeder.
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