Salad Garden

I'm trying to put a little more effort into the salad greens portion of my garden this year. In past years, I have had so many volunteer lettuce seedlings pop up around the garden that I never had to intentionally plant any. However, after overhauling the garden this year, I wanted to start with a clean slate, which means no volunteers.

I'm trying several new salad crop varieties this year including 'Tom Thumb' shown in the foreground below. Tom thumb is a miniature butterhead lettuce. The idea is that you can harvest the entire head and it's enough for a single salad. Head lettuces can be difficult to grow in my area because spring is almost nonexistent (and this year was no exception).  They need cool weather in order to "head up" and our temps tend to jump straight from freezing to boiling. Even if these little guys don't make it to the table, they're adorable in they're own right.

I'm also trying frisee for the first time this year. This is a variety of endive that will grow into really wispy leaves, great for adding texture and bulk to salad mixes. My seedlings haven't started to take on the wispy growth yet, but they're still pretty young.

Another new variety, and possibly my most favorite new variety, is 'Ruby Streaks' mustard. It's peppery, texturey (is that a word?), and gorgeous!

I've devoted almost two whole (approximately 22' long) rows to what I'm calling salad crops this year including kales, endives, swiss chards, carrots, and lettuces. I attempted to plant them in alternating bands of green and red/purple-leaved varieties, so once they bulk up a bit, I think it will be really pretty.

Here's a better look at the drip tape I installed. There are little holes every 12 inches that drip water at a fairly fast pace. I only installed two rows of tape per 36" wide bed. So far it seems to be adequate.

I also plan on fencing in the salad garden this year. Last year the rabbits and squirrels got a little out of hand. While the fence won't keep the squirrels out, at least the rabbits won't be able to make a buffet out of my kale (below) and the rest of my salad garden.

Fun Links and Plant Sale!

I was recently interviewed about urban chicken keeping in the Greater Lansing area by Lansing Area Capitol Gains, and online publication. I got to share a little bit of my enthusiasm for urban agriculture and homegrown food. My hens also got their photos taken, including a gorgeous close-up of Graybeard The Pirate (AKA George Clooney), my gray feathered hen given her celebrity name by the neighbor boys (who didn't realize all my chickens are female).

Photo by Dave Trumpie of Lansing Area Capitol Gains

Here's a link to the article: http://www.capitalgainsmedia.com/features/animals0719.aspx

I also wanted to make a quick shout-out to the MSU Horticulture Gardens annual Plant Sale!!! Their prices are great (I actually think they should raise their prices, considering it's a fundraiser), the selection of flowering plants is exotic (compared to what you'll find at most big-box garden centers), and they have a huge selection of heirloom vegetable seedlings.

Here's a link for the plant sale info: http://www.hrt.msu.edu/plant-sale/.  They even have lists of what will be available for purchase. Time to make my shopping list!

Although all of my garden beds are already reserved, I'm going to have to make room for a few extras.

Getting back to it!

It has been a LONG time since I last posted. Life has been busy (and difficult). I've worked at 5 different jobs since last fall...trying to find that long term career has been more difficult than I ever imagined. I spent the spring semester teaching introductory biology at a community college, which was a blast. However, once May rolled around, I found myself unemployed yet again. That said, the last week and a half since the semester ended has been fantastic! 

I got my lettuce and other salad greens planted.

I grew my first ever pullable lettuce plug. For someone with an horticultural background, this is a BIG DEAL!

I've been able to spend all day, every day, in my garden. I've transformed my raised bed garden into a (hopefully) more productive linear bed layout with a drip tape irrigation system. I bought an irrigation kit from www.dripirrigation.com and added a few extra components to customize it to the size of my garden.

The drip-tape system was incredibly easy to install, I didn't even need the instructions once I got the filter and backflow preventer hooked up to my spigot. After last year's drought-like conditions, this is going to be a huge timesaver (and plantsaver). All I have to do is turn on the spigot for about 45 minutes each morning and walk away. The hardest part is remembering to turn the water off again!

My chickens have been enjoying some valuable mommy-and-me time. I've been letting them out into the yard all day every day (except for the day when a giant husky tried to eat them). They are still enclosed in a makeshift fence, so they aren't completely free-ranging (which is illegal in my city, by the way). 

I haven't been able to harvest much from the garden yet. However, the perennial herbs and rhubarb have already been quite productive. I made a rhubarb syrup using 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 4 cups chopped rhubarb. I simmered it for about 20 minutes and strained the syrup from the pulp. I imagine the pulp would make great fruit leather, but I didn't want to haul out my giant dehydrator just for one sheet. So far I've used the syrup to make rhubarb soda, which is pretty tasty.

My front tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs were really pretty this spring despite the harsh drought conditions of 2012. After the tough summer last year, I was pretty sure that my bulbs wouldn't do much this spring, but I was wrong. My grape hyacinths were particularly nice this year. I brought these bulbs from my parents house to my new digs four years ago. They have multiplied quite a bit!

No-Peel Nectarine Jam

I don't know about you, but I prefer nectarines over peaches. In my experience, the odds of getting a mealy peach is much higher than getting a mealy nectarine. In addition, nectarines are awesome because you don't have to deal with peach skin, which tastes like dryer lint.

This was one of the few jam recipes I made this summer where I actually paid for fruit, but it only cost about $3 for 3 pounds. I bought approximately 9 rock-hard nectarines and threw them into a paper bag with an old banana to speed up the ripening process. Both bananas and nectarines are climacteric fruits, which means they release ethylene while ripening (and the ethylene from the over-ripe banana helps speed up ripening of the neighboring nectarines). 

I used the Ball recipe for peach/pear jam (4 cups or 3 pounds fruit, 5 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and regular powdered pectin). I didn't peel the nectarines because I'm lazy and I couldn't find any skin in the finished product anyway.

I was pretty lucky with the store-bought fruit because not a single fruit was mealy. The jam tastes somewhat similar to apricot jam. In the future I want to try Pomona's Universal Pectin because I felt like the sharp nectarine flavor was a little diluted with all the sugar. In fact, next year I want to switch entirely over to Pomona's. Although my jam yield will be lower, I think I purchased almost 25 pounds of sugar this year just for jam recipes!

Autumn Olive Jam

I was surprised that there's really only one recipe for Autumn Olive Jam floating around on the internet. While the recipe from Dreams and Bones is perfectly fine, I didn't have no-sugar-added pectin on hand and I didn't want to make a run to the store just for that. Therefore, my Autumn Olive Jam is based on the Ball recipe for berry jams (5 cups of mashed fruit with 7 cups of sugar and regular powdered pectin).

First I washed and drained the berries. Then I cooked approximately 9 cups of berries with one cup water for about 5 minutes (or until mushy). 

This glop was run through my squeezo (see it in action here, or here) to remove the seeds and twigs. I only have the apple/tomato screen that came with the food mill and the sizeable Autumn Olive seeds were pushing it to the limit, but it still worked (eventually).

The seeds were incredibly clean after only one pass through the machine. Usually I run stuff through three or four times before this happens (must be the big seeds).

I think the color and texture may be a little off-putting (it kinds of looks like ketchup, or congealed blood), but it tastes good (tart and somewhat unique).  It's definitely a novelty jam, but I think some of my like-minded friends will appreciate a jar.

Foraging for Autumn Olive

I love foraging for free food, so I was intrigued when a friend mention that he had recently tried Autumn Olive berries. After a quick internet search (to learn how to i.d. the plants) I went to one of my favorite foraging locations to hunt down some free fruit.

Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) happens to be non-native invasive species that was planted in the U.S. for erosion control and sometimes as forage for wildlife. It also happens to contain many times more lycopene than tomatoes. I didn't have a camera with me while foraging, but the leaves are metallic silver on the underside, making them fairly easy to identify. The berries also have little silver/gray scales on them when ripe, which helps distinguish them for all the other reddish berries out there in the fall.

I picked a little over a gallon, which took FOREVER! The majority of the Autumn Olive plants that I had found had a sparse sprinkling of berries...and I didn't know any better to look for better plants. It wasn't until I was almost ready to head home that I found the mother-load of berries on a tree that was smothered in them. All I had to do was put the branch inside my bag and strip the fruit of the branch.

Miscellaneous Canning Projects

It turns out that I prefer store-bought spaghetti sauce over my homemade stuff. I'm not sure what it is, but my homemade sauce tastes really acidic and sometimes it gives me heartburn. I've been offloading as much of it on my parents as possible (they seem to like it), but I don't know if I'll ever go to the bother of canning sauce again. Unfortunately, I planted more paste tomato plants this year than I know what to do with. Here's a small portion of this years harvest:

I thought I'd try canning whole tomatoes and see if I like the flavor better. It doesn't take that long to turn whole tomatoes into sauce on the stovetop. I used the hot-pack method, which means you don't have to process the jars as long. Unfortunately, by the time I heated my peeled tomatoes up, they turned into mush. So instead of whole tomatoes, I basically canned extremely watery sauce. Oh well, I can drain out the water and use it anyway.

I also finally got around to making red raspberry jam. I've been working for a lab all summer scouting for insects in a high-tunnel raspberry production system. One of the perks of the job is that I got to pick and keep as many raspberries as I want. I had never made red raspberry jam before because the berries are pretty pricey, so now was my chance to do it with free fruit!

I think I like it more than the black raspberry jam I make each year (from foraged berries). The flavor of the red jam is a bit cleaner and brighter than the black jam.