In the Garden: Savoy Cabbage and Kohlrabi

It's been so beautiful - except for Tuesday, of course.  That was an awfully dreary day, although I'm sure the rye loved it.  Hopefully the Snow Queen's blossoms didn't freeze in the cold spell last night.  The garden is put to bed under the cold-protection again.

The savoy cabbage was ready - it turned out not to be as sweet and flavorful as the red cabbage was, but it made a very nice head.  I still have five more plants - I have to plant more next season!  I tell myself this now when the weather is cool, but planting more will involved toiling in the August sun to build garden beds - I'll have to see if I really like cabbage that much then.

There's been much work on the summer garden.  All the solanaceous beds are built (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, ground cherries).  That was nine long beds in all.  Now I'm working on the more forgiving number of squash, cucumber, and melon beds.  There's plenty of hay and manure to pick up from around where the cows' round bales were.

I pulled a couple of kohlrabi's for dinner the other night, not realizing what enormous vegetables they are (the bulbs looked so small!).  I've never grown them before.  Last year a fellow gardening friend of mine went on and on about how easy they are to grow, cook, pickle.  I cooked them up in some butter.  They made a massive pot of greens, and I liked the flavor (my family doesn't get very excited about vegetables) - sort of a strong broccoli taste.  They also add lovely color to the winter garden, so I'll definitely be growing them again next fall. 

Garden Update

The winter garden is still giving us small bits of edibles here and there.  Radishes - that really needed to be picked earlier, but oh well - and carrots!  They are ugly, stunted carrots, but here in Florida we will take what we can get.  And the kale!  Out of my garden?  I've longed for garden-fresh kale for years now.  It kept freezing, even the Siberian kale.  The kale and carrots went into a stew, and the radishes were on the side with butter.
We also managed to show extreme self-restraint and managed to bring some sugar snap peas home with us instead of devouring them off the vine.

I've started bringing my summer starts out to get used to their permanent home.  They are all doing very well.  I watered them with some Desert Dynamin clay mixed into the water after bringing them out, and I think they liked that a lot.  Notice all the flowers starts!  I hope it is a beautiful garden this year.

There are many more tomato starts to bring out still.  I even custom started some tomatoes and peppers for my neighbors down the street.
Planting time is coming up this weekend!

Some winter garden musings

Oops.
I didn't try to make this the year of the monster turnip, and yet that's what it's become.  I guess it's better than last year when everything froze before we got more than a few radishes.  They got so large so fast, and once that had begun they were too intimidating to eat.  I tried giving them away, but alas.  This one was all corky inside.

We did get a handful of luscious golden peas before the last cold snap, which killed everything--sigh.  I think I'm just a better summer gardener.  Well, maybe I shouldn't say that yet.

This is merely to remind myself how lovely the Japanese Red Mustard was before it got frozen.  It's still alive and is slowly growing back, but it looks like compost.  I guess I'm feeling pessimistic today.  The tomato seedlings for the summer garden are just starting to sprout, so I don't really have any right to complain.

Catching up--the cucumbers and beans

This was late in the evening, so the lighting wasn't great. It was just such a pretty collection of colors. I love the patty pan squash, they are so tasty and so pretty. I stuffed the squash blossoms with basil, garlic and ricotta cheese and battered them with an eggy batter and fried them.

This was our first beans, tomatillos and eggplant.

Do you see how many beans we got?? They were so pretty. One thing I didn't realize was that Tanya's Pink Pod and Red Swan beans are the same color. I was thinking of the Borlotti beans I grew last year when I ordered them. In the distance are the Suyo long cucumbers. They have such an interesting shape.

I wish I had gotten more pictures of the watermelons. We are still getting watermelons off the vines, but they are declining. I grew three different kinds this year: Yellow Moon and Stars (has yellow flesh), Strawberry (red inside--it's a Florida variety), and White Wonder, which has been my favorite. It has very crisp, white flesh inside and is really lovely. The rind is very thin, which must be why you never see any white watermelons in the stores. I made a beautiful watermelon salad with all three colors, and we are currently making three-toned watermelon Popsicles in the freezer!

I don't have any photos, but we also got a bunch of Golden Jenny melons, which look like little cantaloupes. They are orange inside, and very fragrant and sweet. We also got a bunch of Silverline melons, which are so pretty and silver-striped with sweet, white flesh. The Ice Cream or Green Machine melons were my favorite. They are greenish yellow on the outside when ripe, and not very fragrant, so it was hard for me to tell if they were ready or not. But the inside is sweet, green and crispy and strangely like the texture of ice cream. The Collective Farm Woman melons from Baker's Creek just got ripe. We've gotten only three so far. They are supposed to be an early melon, but have been the next to last to get ripe. They're from the Ukraine, I think, so maybe Florida just doesn't agree with them or something. They were very tasty. They looked like any old cantaloupe from the store, but were green and orange inside and very good, although the sweet part was mostly in the center. There are still the Delice De La Table melons, one of which rotted, tragically. I need to find a better way to keep the weeds down so I can actually find the melons. I'm thinking weed guard paper next year.

I've just been marveling about how amazing it is to be able to pick out unusual seeds from all over the world with varieties I had never seen or heard of and to grow them and get to taste them. I've been so enjoying my garden, almost to the point of obsession. When people ask about how my garden is going, I just can't help going on and on about it, and then I realize I'm boring everyone and manage to come to a stopping place.

Catching up

Has it really been a month and a half since I've posted?? Where does the time go?! Since May, lots has happened. It's gotten really, really hot (and dry). This year the summer rains seem to have ceased to exist, unfortunately.

Cloud had her little lamb. He was adorable, while he lasted. We are giving the sheep to our friend Dan in a month or so. They have been such a pain. The lamb is not like the baby goats. He did not recognize his mother apart from Big Dumpling or the dog (unbelievably dumb), which meant that when the stupid dog would get out to go play on the other side of the fence, he would, too. He and the dog were missing one day, and we were sure we had lost him, but then we found them a quarter of a mile away, near the road, and brought them back. Only a week after that, they were missing again, and this time we just couldn't find them. The dog came back, but the lamb didn't. He was so tiny he just slipped right through the 3-strand electric fencing, despite the 7,000 volts. Sad, but then the sheep have been giving us problems all year--like pink eye, and then poor Big Dumpling hasn't been the same since she went to the other farm. I got the Pat Colby lick from Countryside Naturals this time, instead of the usual Fertrell mineral mix, because I think they need more copper. The goats have been so much easier to deal with, shockingly.

And the next bit is that the garden has been fabulous this year. I've never had so much food. Ethan has been complaining a bit about how much he's been expected to eat (he's a meat-and-potatoes-only kind of guy). This was the first, first little harvest of squash blossoms and summer squash and a couple of cucumbers.