Farmer Friday

left 4 eggs from the bantams and a olive egg from a compost chicken

After taking a couple weeks off for the holidays tomorrow we'll be back at the little market in Superior, Arizona. So today was mostly about getting things picked, washed and packed for that. The little bantam hens I was given have been laying about 4-5 eggs a day. They are small eggs and go in my 18 count cartons. Most of the compost chickens, being older hens have taken the winter off so I was surprised to find this pretty olive egg in their nest box this morning.

Rainbow carrots

I finished cleaning out a bed of rainbow carrots. I'll probably plant lettuce there as soon as it's ready to replant. Only one more bed of carrots are left.

Baby Mizuna Mustard

I picked a couple bunches of baby Mizuna Mustard. Its frilly cut leaves are really pretty with the red and green color.

cilantro

Cilantro, also known as Chinese parsley, is a multi-purpose plant. While the flavor is not to everyone's taste, once you get used to it, it's addictive. It's chock full of vitamins and minerals so it's good for you too. It grows very well in cool weather, but won't even sprout once the heat sets in. I like to grow patches of it all over the yard and let them bloom. In the spring they feed the ladybugs and butterflies. Then they make tons of seed. That seed is another herb known as coriander! I love to add a few to my pepper grinder for a different taste. The entire plant is edible, roots, leaves, stems, flowers and seeds.

Lancinato Kale

Lancinato Kale is also called Dinosaur Kale or Palm Tree Kale. It grows up a fat stem and since you pick the leaves starting from the bottom, you end up with something that does resemble a palm tree. 

DiCicco broccoli shoots

The DiCicco broccoli is still putting out little side shoots. These are so tender and yummy even raw. You have to be careful not to overcook them and make them mushy. As soon as they turn bright green they are done!

I also picked some Giant Red Mustard and some Georgia Collard greens, just forgot to take a picture! Besides the veggies I'll have some eggs and my daughter and grand daughter will bring their Peace &  Harmony brand all natural face scrubs and chap sticks.

A Little Seed Saving

Sweet Magnolia pea seed

It was a grey drizzly morning this morning (although we didn't really get any rain) so I spent some time putting up seeds.

First up was a big bowl of dried pods from the Sweet Magnolia purple snap pea. These are really beautiful pea plants with purple flowers and pods.

Sweet Magnolia seeds

Even the seeds are pretty, shades of brown and green, sometimes speckled.

Got them jarred up and started on the mustards. There was a small amount of red mizuna mustard.

red mizuna seed heads

When I cut plants for their seeds I usually just stand them upside down inside a feed sack and let them sit in a warm dry room until they are completely dry. In the case of mustards the seed pods will pop open, dispersing the seeds. You can hear them popping sometimes. To make sure all the good pods have popped I just slap the seed heads against the side of the bag.

seed and chaff

The stems and seed heads go to the chickens and I pour the seeds and chaff out into a bowl. Most of that chaff on top is empty seed pods and easy to pick off a little at a time.

Then I'll swirl the seed around in the bowl and blow on it, which the chaff is lighter and most of it will blow off, leaving some pretty clean seed in the bottom.

Red Mizuna Mustard seed

After the mizuna I worked on the 3 bags of Giant Red Mustard seed heads, but didn't quite get finished yet.

The physical act of saving seeds is pretty easy. Just pick almost ripe seed heads and let them finish drying out. If they are in wet juicy pulp like melons or tomatoes, then I mash the pulp and let it ferment, then rinse and dry. The fermenting process helps kill seed born diseases and it eats the pulp, making it easy to get clean seed. Some plants do have special considerations however. Like corn. With corn you have to save seeds from 100 plants or more in each generation, so that you keep up enough genetic diversity for the plants to continue to be healthy.

Oliver or Oliva????

Back at mom's house I finished cleaning up an empty pen and moved some babies. One baby is an olive egger but I"m not positive yet if we have an Oliver or an Olivia.

mm boy or girl, that is the question

Then my sister refused to come out of her trailer because this spider was on the outside of the door. So I rescued it and put it over in the plants. I'll see if we can find out what kind it is, it's pretty interesting looking.

unknown spider

Around the Garden

pots of flowers

I have put some pots of flowers in mom's front entry, snapdragons, calendula, petunias

Her climbing red rose is blooming.

red rose

lettuce & red mustard in the hoop house

The red leaved mustard is bolting, but the mixed lettuces are still doing OK.

about 40 potted tomatoes

a 'few' more tomatoes

the junk pile

I have been working on the junk pile out back. On the other side of the rock wall to the right is a garden area that I made a long time ago. It's been abandoned a few years now due to javilina issues.

back garden

I' hauling pallets to fence it off from the pigs. Then at least some of the tomatoes will go here.

Harvest Monday

home grown celery

Welcome to another Harvest Monday! Sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions this is a great blog hop to visit with gardeners from all around the world. (you don't have to be a blogger to go visiting, either).

With the lovely warm days and cool but not freezing nights the garden is really picking up, both out doors and in the greenhouse.

Besides my usual salad mix of lettuces, chickweed, lambs quarters, chard, spinach, sorrel, cilantro, I had a few mache plants this week too, just forgot to get a pic of them.

I cut one whole celery plant as a veggie for soup because it looked like it just might be trying to bolt. I haven't bothered with any blanching strategy on this celery, so I don't know if possible bolting or not blanching was responsible for the slightly bitter flavor or something else. But it wasn't bitter in the soup, so it's all good.

tiny broccoli head

The broccoli continues to put out side shoots but they also have just dime to quarter size heads on them. I've decided I don't really care, I just slice up the whole shoot, stem, leaf, itty bitty floret and all. Actually they say the leaves have more nutrition in them than the heads anyway.

snow peas

I've been picking a handful of snow peas every couple of days from the plants in the greenhouse.

greens!

I really love the Giant Red Mustard; a bit too spicy to eat raw in salad, it's wonderfully mild and sweet when steamed or braised. I've been picking mixed greens for cooking a couple of days a week. This photo show from left to right, Giant Red Mustard, a tend tip from wild Lamb's Quarters and some green chard called Perpetual Spinach. I usually chop them all together and braise in chicken stock, sometimes adding a handful or two of shredded cooked chicken meat at the last minute. Some times I also have kale in the mix.

Chicken and greens!

Yellow turnips, white & purple carrots, red & white radishes

There are still a few root crops in the garden, some Golden Globe turnips, some white carrots (maybe Belgian whites), some Purple Dragon carrots, radishes of several colors. The carrots were volunteers at the edge of a bed from plants grown last in 2009. I got busy and forgot about them....





And then I have literally hundreds of baby plants indoors under the lights, you can see some of them here in my post about soil blocks.