Peas

Peas are coming up. We actually planted them on time this year

Hardening off

Hardening off the greenhouse plants

Cold frame update 4-19-11

The cabbage is coming along nicely. There have been a few slugs appearing in the cold frame so beer traps and rock salt have been put inside the frame. A remote thermometer has also been added.

The plan

 

 

The plan for the garden layout. Athough it will probably go awry

These are screen capures from the kitchen garden aid. Its a great free program

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kitchengarden/

Greenhouse update 4-8-11

The seedlings are coming along nicely. I changed the lighting timer to have the lights on during the day instead of at night. There is a defiant improvement form previous years.

Cabbage in the cold frame

Cabbage started out in the cold frame

Seeds started

Here is our mini greenhouse with the seeds planted

Carrots form last year

Carrots that were left to over winter.





The leaf mulch definitely helped this year the carrots fared much better this year. We left a few carrots in the ground so they go to seed. This will be the first time we have tried to save carrot seed.

DIY Seed tape

I have seen seed tape in the stores and thought that it would be a good way to keep rows evenly spaced. The seeds on the store bought tapes are of unknown quality and origin so we have made our own. There are dozens of instructions online on how to do this and this is our take on it. We used news paper cut into strips and “glued” the seeds on with flour and water paste.

Onions

This year we are trying onions from seed. The sets we used last year did not produce a signal onion. Here are the seedlings at one week and they seem to be doing quite well.

Seeds

The seeds from Baker Creek and Comstock Ferre have arived.



Baker Creek

Comstock Ferre

Carrots in January

We still have some carrots in the garden. I pulled a few today and they are in good shape. The leaf mulch we put on them has insulated them form freezing.

garden for 2010 is almost done

The garden for 2010 is almost done. Everything except for cabbage and carrots is dead from the frost. We will mulch the carrots to try to get them to over winter in place. The cabbage will be used shortly.

More tomato's and a squash

We picked a descant amount of tomato's and a squash considering it is almost the end of October. We leave for our cruse in 2 days and they probably would be destroyed by frost by the time we get back.

WECK jar test

Peppers in a WECK asparagus jar. This was test of the "non USDA" approved BPA free reusable lid WECK jar. I acquired a few of these from my sister. The benefits are that the lids are reusable (probably why the USDA no longer approves of the "nothing to buy every year") plus they just look cool.
So far they seem to work gook.

last round of canning 2010

This is the result of the last round of canning for 2010

4 jars of pickled peppers
1 jar of hole pickled jalapenos
3 quarts and 1 pint of basil Roma's
3 quarts and 4 pints of tomato soup
1 pint of sauerkraut stuffed peppers

Smoking jalapenos to make chipotle

Smoking jalapenos to make chipotle