Broccoli Dreams, Meet Broccoli Reality

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Dave @ HappyAcres

The other night I had a dream about harvesting broccoli from our garden. In my dream I had given up on it ever producing anything. But I was pleasantly surprised when I found that nice, large green heads had been hiding out under cover of some kind of weed. Yes! Let’s hear it for fresh broccoli!

dream broccoli (click on any image to enlarge)

dream broccoli (click on any image to enlarge)

Then, I woke up. It was just a dream, I told myself. But what did it mean? If it meant anything, that is. I don’t usually even remember my dreams, and when I do I don’t really try and assign any meanings to them. But this time, just for fun, I did search online and see if dreaming about broccoli had any significance – at least for those who believe in such things.

One common interpretation is that to dream about broccoli is to be in need of spiritual nourishment. While I guess everyone’s spirit could always use a bit more nourishment, I do believe mine is pretty well fed at the moment. So I kept on searching. And then I read somewhere that if you are growing broccoli in your dreams, happy family times are forecast. Since I liked that one, I stopped looking for any further meaning, at least online.

early March snow

early March snow

My wife always says that the best interpreter of dreams is the dreamer. So if you want to know what I really think, it’s that yours truly is ready for winter to be over and for the weather to settle down and warm up so I can get some things planted. But like the above photo shows, winter still has its grip on us here in Southern Indiana. Which is not really a bad thing, especially after last year when we really didn’t have a winter and summer was a real bear with heat and drought the norm.

broccoli seedling ready for transplanting

broccoli seedling ready for transplanting

Back in the real world, the current state of any broccoli here is a long way from harvest. I do have about 50 little seedlings growing under lights in the basement, and they are looking good and about ready to be transplanted into larger quarters. Those plants are destined for planting here and at the Impact Community Garden.  Ideally they should be planted in our area from mid-March to mid-April. Last year it was still early April before we could get them in the ground, despite the mild winter and early arrival of spring. I guess there’s no need for me to be impatient.

So what about you? Are you dreaming about spring too, at least those of you in the Northern Hemisphere? I’ll be back with more later this week. Until then, Happy Growing and Sweet Dreams!

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Saturday Spotlight: Oakleaf Lettuce

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Liz at Suburban Tomato recently started this alliteratively named series to spotlight individual varieties of produce she is growing in her suburban Melbourne garden. She also invited other garden bloggers to join in, and since I thought it was a great idea, here’s my first entry!

Oakleaf lettuce

Oakleaf lettuce (click on any image to enlarge)

My first entry in this super Saturday series is Oakleaf lettuce. This dependable performer has been around since the 1770’s, when it was known as ‘American Oak Leaved’ lettuce. Like the name suggests, the leaves are deeply lobed and resemble the leaves of oak trees. Unlike real oak leaves though, this lettuce has tender and buttery sweet tasting leaves that are great in salads. The lime-green leaves make for a lovely contrast with red lettuces like Merlot or the Red Multy in the below photo.

Oakleaf and Red Multy lettuces

Oakleaf and Red Multy lettuces

Like most lettuce, Oakleaf does best in cooler weather, though it also holds up well in the heat. It’s great at all stages, from baby leaf on up to full size. It also does well grown in containers, or in salad boxes. You can harvest individual leaves, or cut the whole plant at ground level. For a cut-and-come again crop, plant thickly and cut with scissors a couple of inches above the soil line. The lettuce will regrow for a second harvest.

Mini Salad Boxes

Mini Salad Boxes

There are many ‘new and improved’ versions of this heirloom lettuce available. Johnny’s Selected Seeds alone has thirteen varieties of oak leaf types – including eight with green leaves and five with red! However, it’s hard to believe that many of these are much of an improvement over the original, though Salad Bowl is a nice bolt-resistant oak leaf type that was introduced in 1952 and is an heirloom now in it’s own right.

So if you want to grow a tasty green heirloom lettuce that’s stood the test of time, you might want to give Oak Leaf a try. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Saturday Spotlight, and 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.

Posted in Gardening, Saturday Spotlight | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Converting to Mailchimp

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Dave @ HappyAcres

OK, I need to share some technical details with my email subscribers and I decided to do it with a blog post so everyone could get the information, which might be useful to other bloggers as well.

In the next few weeks I will be converting from Feedburner to Mailchimp for all email subscribers to Our Happy Acres. Many subscribers prefer to receive their updates and blog posts via email, and Feedburner has been a popular free service that offers that feature. But last fall Google decided to drop all support for Feedburner, leaving its future status in doubt. And rather than wait for Feedburner to go away, I decided to be pro-active and find a replacement sooner rather than later!

Truthfully, I’ve never been happy with the ‘look’ of the Feedburner emails anyway. And after experimenting with Mailchimp for several months now, and liking the results, I’ve decided to make the switch.

Current subscribers won’t have to do a thing. You should hopefully notice an improvement in the formatting of the Mailchimp version of articles. They will look a little more like the online version of Our Happy Acres, and will have links to allow you to comment directly on the blog, or to view the article in a browser  if you’re having trouble with it in your email reader.

As always, I value all of you who read this blog, and I would never share your information with anyone else, or try and sell you anything! You can always unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link provided in the email. Of course I hope you’ll stick around, and I hope that Mailchimp will improve your reading experience.

I’ll be back with another post soon. Until then, Happy Growing to all of you from Happy Acres!

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Going Purple

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Time for a quick quiz: what’s long, purple and grows underground? Perhaps you’re thinking carrot, or maybe a mutant burrowing eggplant. But what about a sweet potato? I’ve grown a lot of different veggies over the years, but never one like this. And thanks to our friend and fellow MG Carla, the purple sweet potato is going to be on the 2013 garden plan here at Happy Acres.

Carla picked up her sweet potatoes at a market in North Carolina several years ago. She brought them home and cooked them, and liked them so much she decided to try growing them herself. Since then, she has been unable to find anything exactly like them in stores or in gardening catalogs. She has no idea what variety they might be, so we have now christened them Carla’s Purple!

Carla

Carla’s purple sweet potatoes

To be sure, purple sweet potatoes aren’t exactly new. The Okinawa types, which have white or tan skin and purple flesh, were developed by Japanese growers and have been popular there for several centuries. They also made their way to Hawaii, where several million pounds are grown annually for local use and for export to the mainland. And Daphne at Daphne’s Dandelions grew one called Korean Purple last year, but I believe it had purple skin and white flesh.

The purple sweet potatoes that Carla grows look nothing like the Okinawan types or Korean Purple, and have a purple skin and flesh. It is still likely an Asian variety of some sort. Over the years Japanese breeders have come up with quite a few purple fleshed varieties that are available to gardeners and commercial growers. The purple color is the result of anthocyanins, which is a group of pigments that give red, blue and purple colors to many of our fruits, vegetables and flowers. They also have powerful antioxidant properties, so these beauties should be good for us as well as tasty to eat.

I’ll wait until early April to start sprouting the sweet potatoes to make slips. You can start slips by suspending the sweet potato in water until it roots, or by rooting in soil with some bottom heat applied. At this point I’m not sure which method I will use. I might even try it both ways for comparison. I don’t usually plant sweet potatoes here until the first of June, after the soil is thoroughly warmed up.

I am looking forward to trying these purple beauties here this year, and with any luck we’ll be seeing purple here this fall!

UPDATE: Carla sent me a photo of the sweet potatoes that show how purple they are inside. I’ll post it below. Thanks Carla for the photo and for the sweet potatoes!

purple sweet potatoes and carrots

purple sweet potatoes and carrots

Posted in Gardening | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Photo Friday: Sydney and the Blue Mountains

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Dave @ HappyAcres

The second stop in our recent Australia trip was Sydney. We elected to stay in a boutique hotel there, the historic Simpsons of Potts Point. The building was originally built in 1892, and restored in 1988. The front facade of the building was a welcoming sight after our taxi ride from the airport.

Simpsons of Potts Point Hotel (click on any image to enlarge)

Simpsons of Potts Point Hotel (click on any image to enlarge)

entrance to Simpsons

entrance to Simpsons

This hotel was run like a bed and breakfast, with a continental breakfast offered every morning. For this trip we tried to stay in a mix of accommodations, from arty hotels (Melbourne) to fully equipped apartments (Port Douglas). The Simpsons came highly recommended on Trip Advisor, and was conveniently located within walking distance of the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Circular Quay.

One thing I hadn’t really thought about though was that our ‘second floor’ dormer room was really going to be on what I would call the third floor. I got some good exercise schlepping our bags up the stairway! In the end we decided that based on our experiences with B&B’s elsewhere, Simpsons was expensive and overrated. The whole experience certainly definitely didn’t live up to the beautiful exterior. Fortunately the rest of our accommodations on the trip turned out to be top-notch.

stairway up to our dormer room

stairway up to our dormer room

Lynda opening up our door

Lynda opening up our door

We spent about one and a half days exploring around the Sydney area, which of course wasn’t nearly enough time. We took a guided tour of the Sydney Opera House, which was money and time well spent. What a magnificent, wonderful structure! Photos hardly do it justice. It was a little overcast that morning, which helped to keep the temperature down a bit.

our first view of the Sydney Opera House

our first view of the Sydney Opera House

Lynda outside the opera house

Lynda outside the opera house

The outside of the Opera House features sweeping, curved lines that are part of it’s distinctive architecture. The surface is covered with 1,056,000 glazed granite tiles imported from Sweden.They make the outside almost shimmer in the sunlight.

closeup of glazed granite tiles

closeup of glazed granite tiles

Photography is somewhat restricted inside, and limited to certain areas, but we did get a few interesting shots, including the magnificent washrooms featuring pink granite on the walls and floors!

pink granite in washrooms

pink granite in washrooms

stairway to upper level in Opera House

stairway to upper level in Opera House

After our tour of the SOH, we walked around the Circular Quay and on the The Rocks area. The sun came out, and it turned into a hot but beautiful day. We chatted with a well-traveled English couple while standing near the Harbour, and we took photos for each other with the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. We did not climb the bridge, but if you look closely in the below photo you can see a lot of folks who did!

another view of Sydney Opera House

another view of Sydney Opera House

Me and Lynda at the Circular Quay with Sydney Harbour Bridge in background

Me and Lynda at the Circular Quay with Sydney Harbour Bridge in background

closeup showing climbers on the bridge

closeup showing climbers on the bridge

On our last day in Sydney we booked a tour of the Blue Mountains. It was quite foggy in the morning, but cleared up just in time for us to get a good look at the Three Sisters that afternoon. Our day tour also included stops at Featherdale Wildlife Park and the Sydney Olympic Park, plus a rivercat ride down the Parramatta River back to Sydney Harbour. We had a great time on this small tour with about 10 people total, and it was a lovely way to spend a day.

I’ll close with a gallery of photos from that day trip. And I’ll be back soon with more of our photos from Australia.

 

Posted in Photo Friday, Travel | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments