Harvest Monday

Baby lettuces with red mustard, chickweed & viola blossoms

We had some snow again on the 22nd so didn't harvest as much this week as I could have, with everything being frozen. This fall I will start more lettuce and things in the greenhouse earlier to have more salad under cover and easier to get to.

This Harvest Monday blog hop is hosted by Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions. Stop over there and visit with other gardeners around the world showing off their harvests. Don't you just love the internet!

Baby carrots

I also harvested some baby carrots.

This week I harvested:

Salad           8 ounces
Carrots        8 ounces
total            1 pound

15 bean soup cooking on the airtight woodstove

This week I used the ham bone from the ham I cooked last week to make 15 bean soup, one of my favorites. I cooked it on top of the airtight woodstove in the living room, since I had it going all day anyway.

Put the Fat Cats on a Diet: Stop Buying Tainted Food From Billion Dollar Corporations

Put the Fat Cats on a Diet: Stop Buying Tainted Food From Billion Dollar Corporations

Seedy Saturday

Home grown bean seeds, Yard Long, Kentucky Wonder, Hopi Purple Pod

I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from seed giveaways for the holidays, in the meantime you might want to read Garden Seed; Grow Your Own if you have never saved your own seeds before.

Having control of the seed supply equals having control of the food supply and both are in grave danger. Monsanto and other corporate giants have stated outright that control of the food supply is their goal. Which means that there will be less variety and fewer options not only for farmers but also home gardeners, especially as these corporations try to get new laws passed against small seed companies and seed saver exchanges, preventing the free and easy availability of many types of open pollinated, home saved seed. In addition it means that we will be totally at the mercy of the corporations.


This has already happened in the EU where the only commercially available seeds belong to the big companies because only seeds and plants on a special approved list can be sold. And of course the cost to get on the approved list is prohibitive to the small company. There are already things like this that are being pushed on us in the US and the fact that it isn't law yet is only because we are hanging on by the skin of our teeth. You can read more about this at Stop the White List

Seedy Saturday Winner & Harvest Monday

Cooking a ham on my airtight wood stove

 First my apologies for not getting this post done earlier today. I have been having some technical difficulties with my computer and it is a pain. But I'm working them out one by one.

The Harvest Monday blog hop is sponsored by Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions.  Stop on over, say howdy and check out some of the other folks around the world and what they are harvesting.

MMmmm well now it doesn't seem that I've taken any pictures of the harvest this week! I suppose it's a bit boring to look at baby lettuce week after week any way. But I did get a whole pound of baby lettuce this week and amazingly enough, a few of the little Yellow Marble tomatoes! (about one ounce). Yesterday and today have been very grey, drizzly and cold. Which made perfect weather for my experiment which follows.

But I'll tell you what else I did this week; I bought a ham on sale (I love ham with sweet potatoes and applesauce on the side) and when I got home realized that no way was it going to fit in the crock pot. See my oven has been out for awhile so I've just been cooking on the stove top or the crockpot. So I decided to try baking my ham on top of my air tight wood stove in the living room.

The top of the stove runs 150-200 degrees F. so I figured it would work just like those big electric roasters and it did! It was delicious! I think I will experiment with this some more.

My ham cooked on my airtight wood stove.

And now I know everyone is waiting for the winner! The winner of this weeks Seedy Saturday is Katie Hertfelder Congrats Katie! Send me an email to hysong AT cableone DOT net with your snail mail.

To the last couple of winners, I haven't forgotten you, I just haven't made it to the post office yet, hopefully by Wednesday for all of you!

In the meantime, for those of you stopping by for the first time, I write articles on Squidoo. I have made a list of my Organic Gardening articles to make them easy to find, if you want to check them out.

Seedy Saturday Free Seed Giveaway!

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas

Welcome to Seedy Saturday! This weeks free seeds are for Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas. These are the little flat snow peas that you get in Chinese food. They are great raw in your salad or on a veggie party platter, as well as stir-fried. They easily fit into the edible landscape with their beautiful pink and maroon blossoms, resembling Sweet Pea flowers!

These seeds were homegrown in 2009 and still have good germination, at least 80% should sprout. I'll send you about 25-30 seeds, enough to have a some to eat this year and to save your own seed for next year.

If you don't know how to grow peas, or you've had trouble in the past, I've written an article to help you grow the best pea crop ever, How to Grow Peas.

To learn more about saving your own seed check out Garden Seeds, Grow Your Own.

Seedy Saturday Rules: Basic rule, just comment on this post and you are in the running to be drawn for the free seed. There's a couple of other things which you can read on this post.

I will announce this weeks winners on my Harvest Monday post, so be sure and check back on Monday to see if you are a winner!

Rain Water Catchment

My Water tanks

I live in a pretty small house by modern standards, only about 900 square feet, give or take a few. At the moment I only have about one third of my roof guttered to catch rain water. Even though the joints on the gutter leak and one of my tanks has sprung a leak, I still managed to catch 300 gallons of water from about 3 inches of rain.

When I have my whole house guttered and all the leaks plugged, I should be able to harvest about 450 gallons of water for every inch of rain that falls. In that case the three inches of rain that has fallen this month would have garnered me 1350 gallons of water! The next problem of course is enough tank capacity to hold that water until I really need it in May, June and July. Right now I'm using whatever I can get but when I plan my future home I'm thinking of building a cistern big enough to hold several thousand gallons of water and maybe even create extra roof space like covered porches to collect extra water. (Around here, as long as they are not closed in, covered porches aren't counted for property tax value, we are calculated strictly on square footage of enclosed living space).

I've just finished an article with some great resources about rainwater harvesting, called Rainwater Catchment.

Seedy Saturday Winner & Harvest Monday

Red & Yellow beets, parsnips, carrots

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop sponsored by Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions  Stop by her place for links to more wonderful harvests around the world!

This week I didn't get to harvest anything until Saturday because there is still snow and ice around the yard. Before Sat. I couldn't harvest because of the freezing temperatures. But on Sat. I pulled a decent amount of root crops. The tops looked sad and went to the rabbits this time, but the roots, of course were fine. Don't laugh at my pathetic parsnips. I know they are too small, but they tasted fine. I don't think  I got them planted early enough. Better luck next year.

Lettuce is frost damaged under row covers

I have some Agrobon row covers over some of the lettuce bed. This is just layed over the plants and where the snow sat and froze on the cover caused some damage, like freezer burn on meat. But I did pick lettuce and just fed the damaged leaves to the bunnies or the compost depending on how bad they were.

This is where I can see how having the frost blanket over beds inside a hoop house would be great. Funny thing is the lettuce that still has a little snow on it and no frost blanket looks fine and dandy.

This weeks harvest:
Baby lettuce                         17oz
baby carrots                           6 oz
parsnips                                 3 oz
yellow beets, roots only          7oz
Cylindra beets, roots only       4 oz

Total: 2.3 pounds

I have been busy writing more articles for you over on Squidoo, I've added a page here with links to all my organic gardening type articles. I'm currently working on another one about rainwater harvesting; I should have it live in a few days. In the meantime there are some on growing peas, improving soil fertility, using earthworms and several more.

AND THE SEEDY SATURDAY WINNER IS: cathy@home So Cathy if you don't hear from me, shoot my an email hysong AT cableone DOT net and give me your snail mail. Cathy is going to receive a nice big bunch of old fashioned hollyhock seeds.  Don't forget to stop by next Saturday for another Seedy Saturday free seed giveaway!

Around the Garden & in the Greenhouse

pea plants broken down by snow

Today was nice and sunny so I did a bit of work around the garden and in the greenhouse. I surveyed the damage from the snow storm last week.

The Bleushokker peas (in this photo) as well as the Sugar Snaps had some stems broken over by the snow and ice but peas are hardy plants and don't die from freezing. I'll probably just trim off the broken bits and feed them to the rabbits. Rabbits  happen to love pea plants.

freeze damage on lettuce

A lettuce bed covered with Agrobon frost blanket suffered freeze damage where snow sat for days on top of it and the leaves froze to the material.

Lettuce in the Snow

Another bed of lettuce which had been picked to ground level a couple of weeks ago had no frost blanket and so far shows no signs of damage. I think the thick layer of snow that was over it the first few days insulated it from the 22 degree nights.

Beets & carrots after the snow

The beets and carrots looked a little sad after the snow melted off of them, but they tasted just fine when I pulled them up. You can see there is still a little snow at one end of the bed (upper left corner of photo) and the soil is still frozen in some parts.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas in a tub in the greenhouse.

The greenhouse did get down below freezing some nights last week with the storm. Some little nasturtium seedlings froze to death. But almost every else is doing well.

Many things are sprouting up and growing. It gets in the 70's when it's sunny, though it can freeze at night, lately it's been just above freezing while outdoor temps have been just below freezing. One thing that seems to help is that the soil picks up a fair amount of heat during the day the surface is warm to the touch. I think this has helped the seeds sprout and the plants to grow. At this time I don't have any heat sink in the green house mostly due to lack of space, tho I'm thinking about at least using plastic milk jugs full of water.

Little Marvel Pea seedlings in the greenhouse bed

The Little Marvel Peas are sprouting up as well as a few other things.

onion seedlings in soil blocks

An onion plant left from last year and some radish seedlings.

Sweet Alyssum started in soil blocks and moved to plastic pots

Purple Pansies in the greenhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old fashioned violet

Yellow Marble Tomato survives

A big surprise was to find that one of the Yellow Marble Tomato plants did not seem to have been frozen. It does lay over a couple of big rocks and perhaps they helped keep it warm enough, I'm not sure, but tomato season may not be totally over yet.

Don't forget to stop by and comment for Seedy Saturday's free seed giveaway. This week I'm giving away old fashioned hollyhocks, so if you have been wanting some for your cottage garden or to hide the compost pile, go on over and comment on this post to be put in for the free seed drawing.

Seedy Saturday

Red Hollyhock

Welcome to Seedy Saturday! I'm still having some difficulty getting a Mr Linky widget so if anybody knows how to contact those folks I'd appreciate it; if they have a contact button on their website I have not been able to see it. In the meantime, if you have seeds that you would like to give away, you may drop a link to your blog post about it in your comments.

This weeks Seedy Saturday giveaway is for old fashioned hollyhocks. Many different colors of them bloom in my garden, from white and pale pink to a dark burgundy.  Hollyhocks are of course out breeders, with many bees and butterflies visiting the flowers and spreading the pollen far and wide, so no telling what colors will show up in any given batch of seeds.

Mom's Hollyhocks

While classed as a biannual, that is growing a plant the first year, blooming and setting seed the second year, then dieing off, many of mine live from year to year, producing a bigger clump each spring. This partly depends on the weather, if they don't get enough water at the end of blooming they will often die back. So far I have never noticed any of them dieing of cold or snow in winter. But our winters are not nearly as severe as in some places.

I got my first seeds from my mom's hollyhocks and I'm pretty sure she got them from my granny who probably got them from her friends and relatives. They really are just an easy pass along flower!

Seedy Saturday Rules: Everyone that comments on this blog post before 6AM Monday morning is entered to win free hollyhock seeds and the winner will be announced when I make my Harvest Monday post. I will mail seeds to other countries, (I am in the United States) but you are responsible for knowing your own country's rules and if they will be allowed in or not. I don't have time to keep up with stuff like that.

Seed Saver's Jar, Pink Hollyhocks by maryhysong
See more Seed Candy Jars

I am sooo totally pumped! These cute little 'candy' jars from Zazzle look like a great thing to put seeds in and would make a fab gift for your gardening friends! I'm off to go make as many as I have photos for! But you can make your own, just upload the photo of your choice from your computer and change the text as you wish. If you can't figure out something on the Zazzle template, just give me a hollar [hysong AT cableone DOT net] and I'll help you out, if nothing else I can help you find the instructions on Zazzle itself.

Dreaming of Spring & Edible Flowers!

Violas are yummy edible flowers.

Yes, I know, it's not even Christmas and I'm drooling over seed catalogs and dreaming of spring! I just can't wait to really get my garden going full steam again.

One of the things I'm thinking of are all the yummy sorts of edible flowers I can plant. Violas are very nice, a sweet flowery taste to them.

Pea shoots and blossoms are edible and taste like peas. This one is Dwarf Grey Sugar.

Another thing I'm looking forward to are all the sorts of peas I've planted. I haven't ever tried the pea shoots but I have tried the blossom and they taste very much like peas.

Tulips are also edible.

Tulips are also edible as well as beautiful in the spring landscape.

Nasturtium leaves, flowers and seeds are all edible.

Nasturtium leaves and blossoms are edible, but have a hot spicy flavor not enjoyed by everyone. The green seeds are sometimes pickled for use as a substitute for capers, but that sounds like more work than I want to do.

Roses are another edible flower that is often used in the landscape, but so far I haven't really found any with a flavor that really stands out. Some are a little bitter even if you trim off the white part at the bottom of the petal, while others are just sort of bland. So I'm still looking for one that actually tastes like roses!


There are dozens of other edible flowers that you can use to add color to your edible landscape. Most herb flowers are edible and some are colorful. Some vegetable flowers are edible, like zucchini.

If you'd like to read up on more edible flowers I'd suggest Rosalind Creasy's book to get you started.