No Harvest Monday and a Present for My Readers.....

I have no harvest to report for "Daphne's Dandelions" Monday Harvest this week.  I used the last of the edible storage potatoes in my Oyster Stew...all the rest have sprouted now.  We have had more snow this week, so except for a little seedling maintenance I haven't done any gardening for several days now...

The seed babies are all still nestled snug in their beds.  I've checked them every day and the added row covers inside the mini hoop houses are keeping everything at a nice, toasty 33 degrees.  The peas are still growing like weeds and the just planted carrots are showing some greenery (more about them in an upcoming post).

On the home front; FitzGyver was busy last weekend....

I love the new fireplace insert...what a difference it makes in heating the room! 
And hopefully in the heating bill!!

So...what does an avid gardener do when she's snowbound; sitting next to a cozy fire?  She works on spreadsheets, of course!  After I posted my  "Five Season" Planting Guides on Google Docs Julie suggested that I might need a harvest spreadsheet...and I decided that she is right!  So here it is...click on the photo to go to the spreadsheet on Google....
.

And as long as I was making spreadsheets I thought it might be nice to have one for keeping track of my preserving inventory, too....

My readers are welcome to copy the spreadsheets and modify them as they choose for their own use.  If you don't have a spreadsheet program on your PC you can download one for free at "Open Office".

Enjoy!

Harvest Monday...and Oyster Stew

There's still not much to talk about harvest wise...but I did cut a few herbs and pull some potatoes from storage for our Friday night Oyster Stew...

 Ingredients:

1 8-ounce container fresh, shucked oysters, drained (reserve the liquid) and cut into bite size pieces ( I use half of one of the 16 ounce containers of extra small Pacific Oysters from Taylor Shellfish Farm...yes, I know I mention them a lot...what can I say?  We are so lucky to have such an incredible resource for fresh shellfish practically in our backyard!!)

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1  tablespoon  hot water

1/4  teaspoon  saffron threads, crushed

2 slices uncured bacon (I like Nielsen Ranch)

1  teaspoon  butter

1/2  cup  coarsely chopped onion

1/2  cup  coarsely chopped celery

1 cup diced potatoes

3 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 small sprig fresh rosemary

2 sprigs fresh thyme

2  cups  half and half

freshly ground black pepper

ground red pepper

  

Place the chicken broth and potatoes in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the potatoes are tender...set aside.

Combine water and saffron in small bowl... set aside.

Cook bacon in a heavy pot until crisp. Remove bacon, crumble... set aside.

Add the butter to the bacon fat in the pot and melt over medium heat. Add the onion,celery, rosemary and thyme and cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove the herb sprigs. Stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Strain the potatoes from the chicken broth and set aside. Add the oyster liquid, saffron and water, chicken broth and the half and half, stirring with a whisk.  Cook until thick (about 10 minutes), stirring frequently.   Add the potatoes, the crumbled bacon and the oysters. Season well with freshly ground black pepper. Cook about 3 minutes, until the edges of the oysters begin to curl.  Serve in a wide bowl and garnish with ground red pepper.  Serve with fresh, hot bread.  Serves 4

Enjoy!

Deb

A Five Season Planting Guide...and a Pea Patch Report

I've spent the last few days studying two of Eliot Coleman's books, The Winter Harvest Handbook and Four Season Harvest, and using the information to create a spreadsheet for extended season gardening.  I designed the spreadsheet so that it adjusts for both hours of daylight and temperature and used the season ordinals (Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox) as well as the cross-quarter Celtic Festivals of  Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain as the guides for my planting "seasons". What I ended up with is a "Five Season" Garden; Spring, Early Summer, Late Summer, Autumn and Winter....

Click the spreadsheet photo to go to the real thing in Google docs.

There are two pages; one in order of seed starting date and one in order of planting date. I'm hoping to get some feedback.... Any suggestions for other cold tolerant vegetables that I can add to my list?

And a big thank you to Annie's Granny!  I didn't know I could upload my spreadsheets to Google and share them until I saw it on her blog!

It's been sunny (but cold) here today, so I took the covers off of the pea patch to let the seedlings breathe a bit.

The peas are coming along nicely; the first ones I planted are almost six inches tall!  It's been getting quite cold at night so I added another layer of insulation to the bed...

 I'm not using hoops to hold the row cover material up...just a few sticks, so it's more like a tent, but it's working fine; the peas seem quite happy.  It's going to get cold again tonight so I closed up the covers early to let the sun warm it up again before sunset....

I'm still keeping a 40 watt light going under the hoops to warm things up a bit more at night...


Enjoy!

Deb Fitz

Harvest Monday and a soil block experiment...

I don't really have a harvest to report; the salad greens I planted in January are coming along and large enough now to pluck as "baby greens", but I'd like to let them get a bit bigger.  But I would like to share a "Local Harvest"...FitzGyver and I will be heading down to Taylor Shellfish in a little while to pick up the first course for our Valentine's Day Dinner....

 

Mmmmmmm....oysters!

I'm joining other bloggers over at Daphne's Dandelions as we share our weekly harvests...it's fun to see what others are harvesting and what they are cooking up with it...check it out!

On the gardening front I have some news about using the mini soil block maker.  I'm loving this little tool!

This photo shows a mini soil block maker and the small wooden blocks I use to space the soil blocks.  It's easy to drop a seed or two onto the top of each block and then I just sprinkle them with a little vermiculite to cover the seeds.  Placed under lights on a warm germination mat it is amazing how quickly the seedlings are popping up!

I seeded this tray on Feb.11 and this is what it looks like on Feb. 14!!  Some of these are ready to be potted up or go into the garden.  It's easy to pick up one block (I use a pair of bamboo tongs I purchased at Uwajimaya, a large Asian grocery in Seattle).  I then settle the seedling into its' new pot...

and out into the starter house to make more room in the greenhouse...

 ...or straight into a garden bed...

And here is one of my covered raised beds planted with greens that were mostly started in soil blocks only a few days before...

Now for the experiment...the photo above showing the soil block maker and the wooden blocks...well, those are mostly carrots.  Conventional gardening wisdom says to direct seed carrots since they don't like to have their roots disturbed by transplanting.  I think that with these little soil blocks that there is so little disturbance of the seedling that it may be possible to get a head start on germinating my carrots in the greenhouse on a warm mat under lights...at least I hope so...I'll keep you posted!


And just one more little piece of housekeeping...if you are reading this post you know that I have a new Blogger web address.  I am trying to help my friends keep track of my two blogs...which until now had similar web addresses on blogger...as of now my Arts and Crafts Blog, From My Studio at Paradise Cove will be found at:

http://studioatparadisecove.blogspot.com/

And my Home and Garden Blog, At Home On Paradise Cove will be found here....

http://onparadisecove.blogspot.com/

Sorry for the inconvenience to those who have links to my blogs, but this was a change I thought would be better to make sooner than later...

A Felted Vessel...

I've been playing with fiber again!  You can find a tutorial on how to make a felted vessel on my Arts and Crafts Blog, From My Studio at Paradise Cove...

Enjoy!

 

The Fungus Among Us....

Here's what I did instead of watching the Super Bowl....

I ... ummm ..."acquired" ... some alder logs (have chain saw, will travel)....

I drilled 50 holes in each of four logs and stuck a plug spawn (Shitake and Pearl Oyster) dowel  in each hole....

I sealed the holes and the ends of the logs with melted beeswax...

And stacked the logs in a shady spot....now all I have to do is wait....and wait...and wait...and it is supposed to look like this:

Shitake Mushrooms at Fungi Perfecti

Enjoy!

Deb

Harvest Monday...and More Planting Mania...

No harvest for me this week...just some potatoes from storage that I used with a roast chicken....

I'm joining other bloggers over at Daphne's Dandelions as we share our weekly harvests...it's fun to see what others are harvesting and what they are cooking up with it...check it out!

And I owe Daphne a big thank you for her advice on using a mini soil blocker.  My first batch turned out pretty pathetic...

The seedlings are happy (I planted these on Thursday...photo was taken Saturday!   Love those Asian greens!) ...the blocks are probably going to fall apart, so I'll just prick the seedlings out.  The next batch turned out much better after some advice from Daphne.

So...here's the grand tally of my planting spree...

And more....

Including the 600 mini blocks I now have 998 seedling going in the greenhouse...plus the 150 that I've already transplanted to the garden...plus the 200 plug spawn...No!  Wait!  That's another post!  ; )

Enjoy!

Deb

Ribbitt! Ribbitt!

Some folks depend on a groundhog to tell them if spring is near.  Me... I depend on our frogs.  During the summer the days here at the lake are filled with the sound of birds singing.  The evening and night are filled with the sound of frogs croaking.  Big, deep voiced frogs...tiny, high pitched frogs...hundreds and hundreds of frogs...  living here I have learned that when I start hearing the frogs, spring is not far away.  Yesterday I heard it...the first frog of the season!  Only one so far...but I am sure there will be more soon...

Now that I know that spring is near I feel very hopeful about this weeks' "extending the seasons" experiments.  I transplanted about 100 shelling pea seedlings (Dakota) into my pea patch on Friday...

The air temperature in the  covered bed has been staying between 40 and 60 degrees...and I figure since I transplanted seedlings the soil temperature shouldn't be an issue...we'll see....

I've started another bed with snow peas and some broccoli....

The tomatoes I started Jan. 22 are coming along nicely...

Almost all of my seeds germinated and several have their first true leaves and roots beginning to extend beyond the soil block...so I transplanted them to 4" pots....

So far...so good...fingers crossed that the frog's prediction is accurate....

Enjoy!

Deb

Planning. Planning, Planning...

Well, the two new lakeside beds are on temporary hold while we redo the landscaping nearby...which means that what was going to be my early pea patch is now not going to be available in time.  So the pea patch will go into Backyard 5 and I'm thinking of doing a 3 Sisters (beans, corn and squash) planting in Lakeside 1.  I read the posts on the Modern Victory Garden Blog about their 3 Sisters planting and I'd like to give it a try.... 

I've spent a lot of time online these past few days...I guess you could call it studying.  I'm hoping that doing more research and planning will result in a good harvest this year.  Last summer's harvest was pretty much of a bust except for the always cooperative potatoes.  Knee surgery at the end of June (and not being able to do more than hobble for the 2 or three months before that) kept my gardening activities to a minimum and then the weather wasn't cooperative either.

As part of my "studies" I've been visiting the blogs of many other gardeners...many of them with a lot of gardening experience that they generously share in their blog posts.  I was really impressed with the planting spreadsheet that was posted on Daphne's Dandelions.  I have the software for a spreadsheet, but am pretty much clueless as to how to set one up.  Google to the rescue!  There are so many people out there willing to share what they have made...I love the Internet.

My first find was an easy to use seed starting calculator on the  Johnny's Selected Seeds web site.  It was easy to use; I could put in the frost date for my area and it gave me the dates to start the seed and transplant out for many varieties of vegetables and flowers.  But I wanted something that I could download and modify, so I kept looking.

My next find was The Lazy Gardener's Seed Starting Chart  developed by Maggie Wang the "You Grow Girl" web site.  It can be downloaded for free and modified by the user, but didn't have quite all the features I wanted...so I kept going through the Google list...and then I struck pay dirt!

I found a spreadsheet that  Danny Clark shared on the AeroGardenGrowers Forum.  I can set it up by order of date of planting, rather than alphabetically, it has columns for the days to maturity and yield date, which is great information for successive plantings and, best of all...it's set up for Square Foot Gardening...it even has a separate page for laying out a garden!

Here is my filled in spreadsheet...(click on it and use the zoom feature to see it closer to full size)...

And part of my garden layout plan...

I now have most of my planning done and just need get my seeds started on time and get my raised beds cultivated and ready for planting...Kudos to Danny for sharing this great spreadsheet with his fellow gardeners!!

Enjoy!

Deb