Monday Recap: The June Swoon

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It is June, and I am almost giddy with excitement. And why is that, you might ask? Because the garden is mostly all planted and I am through babysitting hundreds of little plants. That seems to happen every year about this time. I still have to plant sweet potato slips, but that is on my schedule for today or tomorrow. Much of the garden has been mulched with paper and/or straw too, and I will continue working on that this week. And we still have another planting session for the Impact Community Garden. But the greenhouse is no longer bulging at the seams, and that is a good thing indeed.

squash plants mulched

squash plants mulched

Another reason to be excited is that we are seeing some ‘new’ faces in the harvest basket right about now. Like the first kohlrabi of the season, in the below photo.

Kolibri kohlrabi

Kolibri kohlrabi

There’s more kohlrabi to come. I think I planted around 25 or so plants of it this year. That’s Kolibri in the above photo, which was the first to size up this year. Winner won’t be far behind. I also have the big Kossak variety planted, which takes a bit longer before it’s ready. You can see one of those plants in the below photo.

Kossak kohlrabi

Kossak kohlrabi

I also harvested some Red Ursa kale last week. I’ve got it and Beedy’s Camden growing in one of the cold frame beds. The cold frame is protecting the plants from the pesky critters, but the kale is starting to get too tall for the cover to close. I need to come up with another solution, perhaps some sort of frame to hold netting? I would like to keep the cold frame bottom, but rig something up that would cover the plants inside, maybe something with a PVC frame. I can always take the top off temporarily. I am open to any suggestions anyone might have.

kale getting too big for the cold frame

kale getting too big for the cold frame

I have surely been enjoying the spring lettuce this year. I guess a rainy April made it grow big and lush leaves. I cut a head of Simpson Elite last week for wilting. And we used some of the Oakleaf for a taco salad. I need to get replacement plants in the ground soon so there will be lettuce for later this month.

Simpson Elite lettuce

Simpson Elite lettuce

In the future harvests department, there are a few garlic scapes that are ready to harvest. Red Janice and Uzbek are two hardneck varieties that were early to put out scapes. These Asiatic/Turban types aren’t good keepers, but they do have earliness going for them. And good flavor, for that matter. It’s my wife’s week to cook (yes, we take turns) so I need to see if she can work some scapes in her menu. Maybe with some Garlic Scape Pesto? That would be yummy! The one in the below photo looks fuzzy, but it’s really little drops of dew that were on it early in the morning.

garlic scape ready to harvest

garlic scape ready to harvest

Some of the broccoli is starting to head up. That’s Packman in the below photo. I am looking forward to fresh homegrown broccoli. It will be nice to have it when the asparagus is through. And speaking of asparagus, we’ve hauled in 21 pounds so far, and we plan on harvesting another couple of weeks as long as the size holds.

Packman broccoli heading up

Packman broccoli heading up

Our sour cherries are starting to ripen. We will only get a few from our small tree, but it is a good start. My wife and I plan on going to a local orchard to pick more cherries for the freezer. We did that last year, and it was nice to have a few more than usual for use throughout the year. Like for the chocolate cherry muffins I make but haven’t yet written up the recipe for sharing here.

tart cherries

tart cherries

And as is usual, our large mulberry tree is loaded with ripe fruit right about now. That brings in lots of birds to feast on the tasty little berries. It remains to be seen whether it keeps the birds off other fruits, but there are usually plenty left for us. I know the mulberries themselves are edible, but I haven’t yet acquired a taste for them.

mulberries

mulberries

I’ll close with an image from a foggy morning showing the view from our front porch.

View on a recent foggy morning

View on a recent foggy morning

 

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Saturday Spotlight: Plantain

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Today’s Spotlight is on a plant that is probably familiar to many, even if not exactly well-known. Plantain is possibly the most widely distributed medicinal plant in the world. Native to Europe and parts of Asia, it can now be found everywhere human beings have traveled. It’s not fussy about soils or growing conditions, and Native Americans often called it “white man’s footprint” since the plant seemed to follow the early settlers around as they began cultivating the soil.

Common Plantain, Plantago major

Common Plantain, Plantago major

I can remember playing with the cattail-like flower stalks as a child, but I only learned its name when I had bought my first house and was reading a book about weeds. Today, plantain is considered an invasive and noxious weed by some, and a must-have herb by others. Which sort of puts it in the same league as dandelions, violets, pokeweed and purslane, all of which are common here too.

closeup showing plantain leaf

closeup showing plantain leaf

Plantain has been growing in every place I have called home, including Happy Acres. We have an abundance of it here, at least the broadleaf variety I am most familiar with, Plantago major.

Narrowleaf Plantain, Plantago lanceolata

Narrowleaf Plantain, Plantago lanceolata

There is another form with narrow leaves that is also quite common, Plantago lanceolata. There’s a lot of it growing on the grounds around the Impact Community Garden, where I got the above and below photos.

closeup of narrowleaf plantain

closeup of narrowleaf plantain

Though attractive in their own way, neither of these types of plantain are likely going to win any awards as ornamental plants. And though the leaves are edible they are also tough when older and can have a mild laxative effect, so they’re not likely to wind up in many culinary creations either. Plantain is most useful for its medicinal qualities, and that is why we value it here at Happy Acres.

common plantain with seed stalk

common plantain with seed stalk

Plantain has antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antihistamine qualities that make it quite useful externally. A poultice can be made from the leaves and applied to insect bites, bee and wasp stings, and poison ivy rash. And if you’re out hiking or walking and get stung by a bee or bitten by a mosquito, you can pluck a leaf of plantain, crush it and apply it to the affected area for some relief. The leaves are also reportedly good for blisters and diaper rash.  My wife and I like to make an infused oil from the dried leaves, then use the oil to make a salve. The salve is handy to have on hand when needed, especially in summer when insect bites and poison ivy seem to show up here regularly.

harvest of plantain from our back yard

harvest of plantain from our back yard

I’ll be back later and with more information on how we harvest and dry the plantain, then use it to make the infused oil. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Spotlight on a common and very useful plant.

UPDATE: To see how to make the infused oil, read Homemade: Plantain Infused Oil.

To see my other Saturday Spotlights, visit the Variety Spotlights page.

 

 

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Squash, Scapes and Parsley

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Yesterday I spent much of the morning planting and then mulching the bush squashes. I planted 16 of them in a 40 by 4 foot bed. That is a lot of squash, but I also have some vining types yet to plant. I gave them the same treatment I usually do, mixing in a shovelful of compost and about a cup of organic fertilizer for each plant. I like to start the plants inside, which I did about 3 weeks ago. That gives them a head start plus I get near 100% germination that way and use less seeds than if I sowed them directly in the ground.

bush squashes after planting

bush squashes after planting

After planting I laid down sheets of newspaper and then covered them with straw. That should keep the weeds down and also keep the fruit off the ground. The straw and paper also add organic material to the soil when I work them in at the end of the season. Our silty soil benefits from the additional organic matter, but then what soil doesn’t? You can barely see the squash plants in the below photo, but before long they will be vining all over the straw.

squash after mulching with paper and straw

squash after mulching with paper and straw

The garlic is planted right next door to the squash, and as I was working on the squash bed I happened to notice the first garlic scapes coming on. The Asiatic/Turban types are the ones with scapes right now, but the rest of the hardneck types won’t be far behind. I can see a harvest of garlic scapes in my near future. And some of Daphne’s Garlic Scape Salad Dressing. Yum!

garlic scape on hardneck garlic

garlic scape on hardneck garlic

The overwintered parsley in the greenhouse was flowering so it was time to pull it up and then look for ways to use it. The first thing I did was make a double batch of Pesto Amalfitana. Some of that wound up in a pasta and asparagus dish I made, and some is going on a pizza tomorrow night. I also used some of the parsley to make Quinoa Tabbouleh.

Quinoa Tabbouleh

Quinoa Tabbouleh

I loosely followed a recipe at Epicurious, and the proportions were pretty much to taste. I love tabbouleh, and I’m wild about quinoa too so the combination works well for me. I harvested almost 8 ounces of parsley, which is a lot. I do have some new planted but it will be awhile before there’s enough to make pesto or tabbouleh again. That in the below photo is what’s left after making pesto and tabbouleh, which is still quite a lot. It was a mix of flat and curly leaf types.

leftover parsley after making pesto and taboulleh

leftover parsley after making pesto and tabbouleh

I’ll close with one last image of the baby bluebirds. I captured this when they were eight days old. They are starting to look a little bit like bluebirds. They all seem to be doing fine, and they should fledge sometime next week.

baby bluebirds at day 8

baby bluebirds at day 8

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend and I will be back soon with more happenings from HA!

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Monday Recap: Out With The Old, In With The New

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Dave @ HappyAcres

For the last couple of weeks it seems like I have been replanting a lot. It started in the blackberry patch. My wife and I decided we wanted to get rid of some of the older blackberries to make room for gooseberries and rhubarb. I have a couple of rhubarb plants already but they are not in a great location and not doing as well as they should. So we dug up the old (blackberries) and planted four plants each of gooseberry and rhubarb. We have Amish Red, Hinnomaki Red, Captivator and Invicta gooseberries. And we have one Canada Red Rhubarb while the rest are Green Victoria. I left the old rhubarb plants so we can harvest them until the new ones get established.

rhubarb plant

rhubarb plant

Other replanting has involved harvesting. As I harvest lettuce in the greenhouse, I have been replanting with leaf amaranth. The amaranth should hold up to the summer heat in the greenhouse better than most greens. The variety in the below photo is Miriah, and it has red veined leaves that can be eaten raw or cooked. I have another red-leafed variety called Polish that I will be planting later for the greens.

Miriah leaf amaranth

Miriah leaf amaranth

As the spinach has bolted, I have been harvesting it and replanting too. I set out cucumbers in the greenhouse bed, and I have been planting celery in one of the coldframe beds. The celery was started back in early March and the plants are nice sized now. The rest of the spinach will be replaced by basil when those plants are ready. It’s been too cold to set out basil yet.

planting celery

planting celery

My wife made a Spinach Pie with some of the spinach I harvested. She usually uses some of the frozen spinach when she makes it throughout the year, but this time we had fresh. I love this dish, and it was one of the many great recipes she brought to our partnership. As I said when I posted the recipe, it’s not exactly a quiche, and not exactly a tarte, so we just call it spinach pie! There was enough spinach in the colander in the below photo for the pie plus some for the freezer.

May spinach harvest

recent spinach harvest

The asparagus bed certainly isn’t going to be replanted anytime soon. It’s alive and well and still in the prime of its life. My wife has been harvesting spears daily, and we’ve hauled in 13 pounds of it so far this year during the first four weeks of harvesting. I roasted some the other night, drizzled with some olive oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and some dried herbs.

roasted asparagus

roasted asparagus

We’ve been enjoying sweet potatoes from storage. They are still sweet and tasty, and even the one in the below photo (Beauregard) with considerable vole damage was still in great shape some seven months after digging. It was one of the bigger ones, weighing in at a little over two pounds. I had a hard time getting all of it in the photo! It will soon be time to plant this years crop, and I have slips ready to go when the soil warms up a bit.

Beauregard sweet potato with vole damage

Beauregard sweet potato with vole damage

I know some folks might be thinking “are they really going to eat that rodent-damaged sweet potato?” And of course the answer is a resounding YESSSSS! We ate it with gusto, after I trimmed away the bad spots. Actually we ate it roasted with a little olive oil and rosemary, and it was good to the last bite. If you look closely in the below photo you can see the teeth marks from the vole. I am just happy they didn’t eat the whole thing, because sometimes there’s nothing left to harvest.

closeup of vole damage on sweet potato

closeup of vole damage on sweet potato

Not ready for harvest yet are blueberries, but the bushes are loaded with little blueberries. I am really looking forward to fresh ones, probably beginning next month.

young blueberries

young blueberries

I’ll close with some images of something else that’s new and blue, and not quite ready for prime time. These baby bluebirds hatched last week. The below photo was taken on Tuesday, when they were just hatching out. One egg hadn’t even hatched at that time. Notice the empty space in the nest around them.

just hatched baby bluebirds

just hatched baby bluebirds

I got the next image yesterday, five days later. The babies have really grown in that time, starting to fill up the nest, and you can see the beginnings of feathers. The eyes are still closed, but they should begin opening in the next day or so. They grow up so fast! I have been putting up boxes and watching baby bluebirds for close to thirty years now, and I will never cease to be amazed at watching the miracle of life unfold in a little nest box.

bluebirds at day 5

bluebirds at day 5

I hope you have enjoyed seeing a bit of what’s going on here about now. I’ll be back soon with more happenings from HA!

 

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Saturday Spotlight: Lemongrass

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Dave @ HappyAcres

In the last few years, I have come to love all things lemongrass. Lemongrass is one of my favorite tea herbs, either used by itself or mixed with mints, lemon balm or lemon verbena. Of course it’s an essential ingredient in Thai cooking, where it lends its distinctive taste to a variety of dishes, including my favorite green curries. And I love using the essential oil in our homemade soaps. But it was only recently that I learned how easy it is to grow. And even more recently I found out how to start your own plants, thanks to Michelle who blogs at From Seed To Table (see her post on Lemongrass).

There are several different kinds of lemongrass, but Cymbopogon citratus is the kind most often grown for culinary use. It is perennial in warmer climates, and hardy to USDA zone 10. Which means it must be treated as an annual in my zone 6b garden. It is also easily grown in containers, and I’ve been growing it that way for many years now. Lemongrass seems to grows well in soil of average fertility, and I do give the plants a drink of fish fertilizer occasionally to give them a shot of nitrogen. I usually grow them in containers 12-15″ in diameter which are easier for me to move around. Larger containers make for larger plants, and the pots can also be sunk in the ground in the summer and then dug up and brought inside for winter.

leaves of lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus)

leaves of lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus)

Though lemongrass seed is sometimes listed in catalogs, often as ‘East Indian Lemongrass’, it is usually Cymbopogon flexuosus which is not great for culinary use. The most flavorful strains of lemongrass are grown from cuttings.  And if you have an ethnic market that sells lemongrass stalks, they can easily be rooted in water. Try and select stalks that have some green leaves attached and aren’t too dried out, though I have to say I have had pretty good luck in getting even the sorry looking ones to root.

lemongrass stalks rooting in water

lemongrass stalks rooting in water

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a big handful of stalks, a dozen or so, for about $2 in my favorite local market (Aihua). I stripped off any really dried leaves, and stuck them in a quart jar about half full of water. I changed the water every few days, and in less than two weeks they were well rooted.

lemongrass showing roots

lemongrass showing roots

After roots are showing, they can be planted in the open ground or in a container. I’ll put four or five in a container, and plant the rest of them in a clump behind our greenhouse. They’ll grow quickly as weather warms up, and I can harvest them all summer and fall as needed. The plants themselves are pretty carefree and easy to grow, with no pest problems I am aware of. Even the hungry deer leave them alone! The edges of the leaves are very sharp, so you do need to be careful when harvesting or working around the plants. I have cut myself more than once while harvesting. I’ll mulch the ones planted in the ground to keep down weeds and conserve moisture, and water as needed throughout the growing season. Of course the container grown plants will need more frequent watering.

container with rooted lemongrass stalks

container with rooted lemongrass stalks

Since they aren’t hardy here, I’ll bring the container in for the winter, and I may also dig up a clump from the ground, pot it up and bring it inside too. I keep the container(s) in the basement under fluorescent lights during the winter months, and I harvest leaves as needed. The growth is much slower in winter, but it does make new leaves and the older leaves stay flavorful for a long time. I have not had much success with drying lemongrass for later use, as I find the dried leaves have little or no flavor. Fresh is best in this case, and it is pretty easy to have fresh leaves year round.

over-wintered container of lemongrass

over-wintered container of lemongrass

By the second year, the container grown plants should be full of growing shoots and getting a little crowded, like the one in the above photo. You can either divide them into multiple plants, or do what I’m going to do and stick the whole thing in the ground for the summer. That way it can spread out and make lots of leaves for use all summer and fall.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Saturday Spotlight on a lovely and surprisingly easy to grow tropical herb. I’ll be back soon with another variety. Until then, Happy Growing from Happy Acres!

To see my other Saturday Spotlights, visit the Variety Spotlights page.

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