Proscrastination, tool troubles hinder harvest

Note to self for 2014 garden: As much as you’ll try to find excuses not to, remember to keep up with late summer weeding. It makes it a lot easier to find and dig root crops like potatoes and carrots. And another thing. Don’t think you can make do with a pitchfork that has a bent tine. Now, maybe logic (or in my case my inner cheapskate) tells you that you should be able to bend it back in place and it should work normally, but odds are it won’t. Just buy a new one. (By the way, is it just me, or does the pitchfork in the above photo looks like it’s giving me the finger?)

Cool October weekend makes for hot potato soup

The last of the potatoes from this year’s garden went to a good cause — potato soup.

Chopped up onions sauteed with butter and whole allspice gets the potato soup started.

Once the onions are sauteed, you cook the potatoes and veggies in the same pot.

Thicken up the veggies, add some milk and butter and you have the best comfort food on a cold fall day.

This weekend’s cold temps gave me the chance to use up the last of the onions and potatoes from the garden and make one of my favorite meals — potato soup. It’s the perfect comfort food, its creamy white base and veggies soothing for the tummy and the soul. It’s easy to make, too, and fills the house with a wonderful smell starting with onions sautéed in butter with allspice and salt. Growing up, I knew allspice as kubaba, the Polish word for the blend of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

Fresh veggies make for a happy table this week

The onions are a lot smaller than last year’s crop.

Carrots and potatoes picked today.

I found these volunteer tomatoes beneath a bunch of weeds.

Cassie came by the garden just in time to eat a few raspberries.

I was able to spend a little time in the garden this afternoon before the rain set in. Well, it wasn’t really rain – more like heavy sprinkles – but enough to keep me inside. It was a strange kind of day in the weather department. Off in the distance, it thundered and there was lightning, but not only did we not get any heavy rain at our house, the sun was shining most of the time. Pretty, puffy light clouds juxtaposed with a dark sky and heavy gray clouds. Like I said, strange.

July 31: Saying goodbye to July

At the beginning of July, I made a promise to myself that I’d pay more attention to the garden. June had been a less-than-stellar month in terms of my caretaker responsibilities, and I knew that I needed to kick it into high gear if I was to get any “booyah” out of the garden.

Given the extreme heat we had all month and the lack of rain during the last half of June and first half of July, my garden needed all the help it could get. Early on in July, I enjoyed the heat and the way it helped the garden grow with the help of my sprinkler. By the second week of July, the heat got to be pretty overbearing on everyone and everything. Watering the garden helped, but it was clear it couldn’t replace the real thing.

July 22: The philosopy of weeding – or not

Lettuce tastes much better sans grass.

My first dill pickles!

Just.

Because.

They’re.

Pretty.

Looking east.

Looking west.

Spent about an hour and a half in the garden this morning, mostly weeding the lettuce, onions, carrots and flowers that ring the garden. I decided to start early (about 7 a.m.) because of the high humidity, but it didn’t matter all that much. It didn’t take long before I was drenched in sweat and so hot that my glasses kept steaming up on me.

I had a two-fold reason for weeding, the first being that I wanted to cut the lettuce and didn’t want to have to pick out the grass when I washed it later.

July 12-13: Extreme heat back; still waiting on rain

Here we go, another streak of temps in the 90s. I know, I know, it was only a week ago that I said I loved how the heat was making the garden grow great guns. Of, course that was when I thought we’d have more than a couple days of 80s — and maybe some rain — before we got started cooking again.

Beautiful, beautiful beans.

Lettuce taking on bitter taste in heat.

Onions pungent and pretty.

Just love the cosmos flowers.

One of two itty, bitty pumpkins that have appeared so far.

Love the smell of fresh dill.

My garden looking east.

My garden looking west.

Summer officially has begun — the race to fresh veggies is on

I always feel a certain sense of satisfaction when my garden is finally planted. And so it is. I spent the last two evenings first tilling under the weeds that had grown since the first go-round in April, then planting several more rows of peas, lettuce (photo below) and onions, plus beans, carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower and potatoes.

And, of course, I planted tomatoes. I am thrilled to say I broke my pattern of buying the biggest
tomatoes I could find in order to get ripe ones by early July. For those of you counting, that’s the third thing I pledged to do differently this year — the others being not tilling and planting everything in an eight-hour period and planting a few early crops.

Three cheers for early veggies!

Wow, where did the time go? Oh, that’s right — track, soccer and basketball. The garden — and my Garden Booyah blog — unfortunately have taken a backseat to my daughter’s sports activities. That’s not to say I’ve totally ignored the garden, but I definitely have been ignoring the blog. For that, I apologize. I’ll try to catch you up.

A little over a week ago, I planted a second row each of lettuce, onions and peas. I also replanted the bare spots in the row of lettuce and one of the rows of peas I planted on April 19. Our warm March turned into a lot of cooler weather in April and early May, so they needed filling out a bit. All in all, though, I’m happy with them. If the weather stays the way it has been for the past several days — high 80s, low 90s — it won’t be long before I have fresh lettuce for my daily salad. And the peas? I think they grew two inches the past two days alone! I can already taste fresh peas in the pod for supper — as Rachel Ray would say, “yum-o!”

Some quick garden pics

A little more than two weeks after the early veggies were planted and they’re showing signs of life. It took a little longer than I thought for the peas and lettuce to peek out of the ground, but they slowly are. The onions also look like they’re off to a good start.

The weeds do, too, unfortunately! And the rain, while much needed for the veggies, is helping the weeds plenty, too. Already the spring/summer tug of war between THEM and me begins. Who will win? It’s hard to say, but I’ll try my best to rid the garden of those evil things.

Here are a few photos of my garden’s early veggies. Look hard enough and you’ll see them between the weeds.

There really are two rows of onions among the weeds. I plan to plant a few more rows in a week or two, too.

Perfect weather gets garden off to great start

Well, I did it. Took the plunge.

Planted some lettuce, peas and onions today.

And you know what that means — the tiller made its first appearance of the year. For the second year in a row, it started easily, and in no time at all I was turning over the soil. Saturday afternoon was perfect gardening weather. It was only in the low- to mid-50s, but it was sunny and there was little wind. In no time at all, the sweatshirt came off and I was breaking up the soil and loosening the weeds left over from last fall. (Photo at right was actually taken Sunday, when it was windier and a bit cooler than Saturday.)

It took about an hour to till the garden; then I turned to raking up the bigger chunks of weeds that I was too lazy to pull up last year, as well as the clumps of grass that seem to keep coming back despite the sod being pulled three springs ago. Will they ever go away?

I knew when I started raking that I’d have to do another round of tilling to remove the clumps of grass I couldn’t pull up by hand. But the funny thing is, it was OK — I wasn’t worried that I’d have to work all afternoon and into the evening to get it done. Because I planned a bit (one of my goals this summer), I didn’t have to till, rake AND plant all in the same day.